I set up The Speculation Studio and wrote The Speculation Studio Book and designed The Speculation Studio Cards because I believe that we need new ways of thinking about the present situation and the future. We need to take a moment to step back from the day-to-day demands of running our businesses to imagine. We need to see the world in new ways if we are to make the best sort of strategic decisions.
The Speculation Studio offers workshops and coaching designed to give you and your team a space and the tools to take that step, to imagine and to think creatively. Each of the Workshops uses the Speculation Studio Cards, Paul Caplan take attendees through the idea of speculative fiction, the concept of actor-objects as a way of seeing the world and their business and then through a series of creative 100-word writing practices and reflections, I help attendees explore their business and business challenges through speculation.
the Starting Speculation Workshop:
Do you just want to get your team out of the day-to-day, rediscovering teh creatovity and passion that brought theme together in the first place. The Starting Speculation Workshop offer an introduction to the practice of speculation.
the Kick-off Workshop
Is your team about to start on a new project, maybe with a new client. Why not get everyone together – including the client – and speculate a little into the future, take some of the actor-objects that will be in play for a walk and see what you can imagine, what new questions and ideas arise?
the Plateau Workshop
Has your team reached a plateau? Has the initial hockey-stick growth in ideas and imagination begun to level off. Why not get the team away from the day-to-day to spend time re-finding their creativity through speculation?
the Crisis Workshop
It might not be a major crisis but every project, business and team runs into challenges. Why not take the focus off the immediate problem and het your team to rediscover their creativity and imagination and approach and then revisit the challenge from a new direction?
the NPD Workshop
Speculation doesn’t take the place of design thinking but it can provide a creative and future-facing foundation for that design sprint or ideation programme.
the Workshop Programme:
As I explain in The Book, speculation is not a one-off, it is a regular practice. After the first, kickstart workshop, you can enrol your team in the Speculation Studio Workshop Programme. Each week, members are supported in speculating using The Cards and, as their speculation skills increase, other objects more closely related to your business. Through regular supported writing and reflection activities through The Speculation Studio app, members build speculation into their work and your business.
Each Workshop and Programme is tailored to each business. Workshops can be built around the existing Speculation Studio Cards or we can develop a bespoke set of cards just for your business, your issues or your challenges.
Let’s talk and see how The Speculation Studio can help you and your team.
Oh and just a note from The Speculation Studio Book about ”creative workshops”…
We’ve all been there. That away day with the earnest musician encouraging us to pick up the drum and jam. Improvisation as metaphor. Or the team-building day where management found themselves in a group with the intern making a model bridge out of cocktail sticks and marshmallows to cross an imaginary river. The episode of The Office that never aired.
Writing speculative fictions is not a creative workshop. It is not a team-building exercise. Nor is it a design thinking ideation workshop. You won’t come out with a new product or service. What speculating does is to help you reconnect with the imagination that day-to-day business drums out of you. It refreshes. It reminds you of the imagination and creativity that got you started in the first place. And it pushes that imagination to consider new implications, new power relations and futures that you and your business are enfolded with. That may change your business. It may change your product line. It may lead to new launches or new directions. It will certainly lead to new thinking. It will change you.