Brian... Nice to hear from you. And, as you already know or will shortly find out, solid research regarding Open Space is in very short supply. For reasons best known to itself, Academe has assiduously avoided the subject. With the exception of a few dissertations, all good and useful to be sure, there has never been (to the best of my knowledge) any serious, peer reviewed research. Odd, to say the least. I do have my suspicions as to the rationale, or lack thereof...but it is pretty much virgin territory with lots of rich findings just waiting for discovery.
What Academe has chosen to ignore has not gone unnoticed, and I don't think it would be stretching a point to say that OSLIST, this funny old listserve, is in fact a multiyear research conference conducted by the folks who know it best - the practitioners of Open Space from all over the world. It may not observe the standard protocols -- random, double blind studies and such -- but the discussion is rigorous and quite often heated. Lots to look at. And if you will forgive a personal note, you might check out my last book, "Wave Rider: Leadership for High Performance in a Self Organizing World" It struck me some years ago that Open Space sets itself up very nicely as a Natural Experiment. We have clearly defined experimental pre-conditions, a standard process, with comparable outcomes. As a Natural Experiment, the standard controls are largely absent, however in the way of natural experiments, very large numbers tend to make up for this lack. In the case of Open Space, there have been roughly 300,000 iterations of the experiment, conducted in 146 countries over 29 years. The book is essentially my "Final Report." The personal biases are obvious, but I think the data is pretty strong. Enjoy. Harrison Winter Address 7808 River Falls Drive Potomac, MD 20854 301-365-2093 Summer Address 189 Beaucaire Ave. Camden, ME 04843 207-763-3261 Websites www.openspaceworld.com www.ho-image.com OSLIST To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of OSLIST Go to:http://lists.openspacetech.org/listinfo.cgi/oslist-openspacetech.org From: OSList [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Bryan Rill via OSList Sent: Friday, November 14, 2014 12:34 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [OSList] Open Spaces research Dear Harrison and other Open Spacers, I would like introduce myself and make a request regarding research into the efficacy of Open Spaces. My name is Bryan, and I recently founded the Co-Creation Institute at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. CCI, as we call it here, is a space to facilitate personal and organizational transformation, with a strong base in presence and reflective dialogue. Our objective is to create new cultures of innovation that combine interactive environments with co-creative facilitation. I invite you to explore our program, but more importantly I would like to know more about existing research. Co-Creation and presence training will benefit from empirical research, and I am now looking for related research projects to inspect the methodology, issues raised, and future directions that we may push. Open Spaces integrates many of the principles that we draw inspiration from, and I am planning on implementing it as a framework within CCI. While I have read many discussions and the text on Open spaces, I would like to find out more about how others have conducted research. If anyone has such information, please contact me any time. Our program would benefit from your experience. Kindest Regards, Bryan Rill, PhD Director, Co-Creation Institute Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Design [email protected] www.co-creationinstitute.com
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