The Hothouse Effect

Barton Kunstler wrote a book, The Hothouse Effect: Intensify Creativity in Your Organization Using Secrets from History's Most Innovative Communities. I haven't read the book (got it ordered), but I did read an article by the author "The Hothouse Effect: A Model for Change in Higher Education", On the Horizon, V 13 # 3, 2005. In his book he identifies 36 causative factors for innovative communities. In the article he selects nine factors for elaboration:

1. Values are "lived" throughout the environment, rather than being imposed from above
2. Members continually challenge and re-create the fundamental assumptions of their disciplines
3. The group's mission aspires to universal, even cosmic, application
4. Group members work closely with experts across disciplines and departments, and utilize many fields of knowledge when seeking solutions
5. Practitioners use sensory and body-centered techniques to stimulate creativity
6. Inquiry into fundamental principles of perception and learning are central to the group's work
7. Surroundings are saturated with information and materials intended to stimulate idea development
8. The community experiences sudden and rapid engagement with a much larger and more complex "meta-system" early in the hothouse cycle and is exhilarated by the subsequent possibilities without being overwhelmed by the larger system
9. The community strives to create beauty in one form or another

This is worth more study