Author: Oliver Broadbent

The Kalideascope is a model that engineers (and other humans) can use to understand idea generation as a structured process. It is concerned solely with the process of generating ideas and not the evaluation of these ideas.

What is an idea?

Our model starts with the pragmatic premise that an idea is simply a new pattern created by mixing together existing patterns in the mind. 

For example, when nineteenth-century French gardener Joseph Monier was trying to find a better way to make flower pots, he experimented with combining concrete (which on its own was brittle) with an iron mesh to create a new idea: reinforced concrete. Monier knew about concrete and he knew about iron; his idea was to bring the two together. 

A material from one context used in another. Taking a different shape and applying it to a familiar form. Applying an emerging technology to an existing field. These new combinations, or recombinations, of existing patterns all represent new ideas. 

This perspective on idea generation gives us two things to focus on in the creative process: what patterns do we need as inputs to creativity; and how do we make the new combinations? 

Introducing the Kalideascope

In his book ‘A Technique for Producing Ideas’, James Webb Young describes idea generation as a process akin to using a kaleidoscope. With reference to our model of idea generation, the bits of coloured glass at the end of the kaleidoscope are the existing host of patterns in our minds. Turning the kaleidoscope rearranges those bits of glass to create new patterns – new ideas.

We call a kaleidoscope for generating ideas a Kalideascope (Broadbent, 2020). The model leads to three distinct steps to a creative process that we can follow:

• Building the Kalideascope – creating a shared space for idea generation. 
• Filling the Kalideascope – gathering diverse inputs.
• Turning the Kalideascope – making new connections to generate ideas.

Stage 1 – Building the Kalideascope

This first stage is about creating the space in which your creative inputs can be gathered, displayed and engaged with. 

While it is normal to gather lots of inputs for any project, we are not always thinking about the best way to gather these inputs to support the creative process. Engineers often approach data gathering from a quality management perspective, ensuring inputs are securely stored and organised on servers. But from a creativity point of view, what matters is that these inputs can be seen.

Think of detectives in television dramas solving a crime: potentially useful information is pinned on a large board so that patterns can be spotted. This clue spotting technique reflects the non-linear character of the creative process: we don’t always know what information will be useful and in what order.

A display board covered with inputs has the potential to fill our field of vision. Yet, many engineers (and other humans) work using a laptop or a single-screen computer. That’s about a twentieth of our input field (even less if we are working on our phones).

So the first stage in the creative process is finding a place to gather our creative inputs that harnesses the scale of our visual field and reflects the non-linear character of creative thinking. We call this process ‘Building the Kalideascope’. An ideal space would be a large wall, a notice board, or table. 

If working in the same place as your colleagues is not possible, then an online whiteboard, while not maximising the field of vision, at least creates a shared collection place. And at the very least, if you are working on your own, dedicate a double-page spread in your notebook as your project Kalideascope.

Building the Kalideascope starts the creative process by establishing the best place to gather all our inputs in a way that allows us to cast our view across them. 

Stage 2 – Filling the Kalideascope

Once our creative working space is set up, we can begin to populate it. We call this filling the Kalideascope. You can prime the process by initially organising content under three headings: 

• Information – facts relating to the project.
• Questions – open-ended questions that emerge and are prompt for further exploration. 
• Ideas – emerging possibilities and insights.

From these starting points, inputs can be drawn from two categories of sources: in the moment (immediate, project-related information) and over time (drawn from long-term accumulated knowledge). 

Kalideascope Inputs in the Moment

These are potential sources for inputs to the creative process that we can gather at the start of a project.

• The brief – what the client says they want. The client doesn’t have to be another person; it could be you. The importance is to get some inputs from the person who is commissioning the work.
• The site – no matter whether it is a building, a website or a process, your creative work will be ‘situated’ somewhere. Go to that place and absorb whatever inputs you can.
• Colleagues and collaborators – their ideas and experiences can be important inputs to your creative thinking.
• Precedents – similar or relevant work that you have done before. Nothing is new; allow for iteration and repurposing.
• What comes to mind – our brains can’t help but generate ideas as we work. So we should make the most of the creative capacity and treat these initial ideas as inputs to our creative process. Capture these thoughts and feed them into the process.

Some of the inputs sound obvious, but systematically working through this list can strengthen the creative process.  

Kalideascope Inputs Over Time

The second category of inputs to our Kalideascope is the wealth of knowledge we build up over time that we can draw upon in the creative process. Some of these inputs that we gather over time are accidental; some of them, we can be more strategic about gathering:

• Deep observation of place – design that builds ecological and social thriving starts with extended observation of ecosystem and community. These are not the sort of observations that you can just pitch up and gather; rather, they take time to uncover or understand. This deep observation helps us understand how the complex systems we are working with behave so that we can use this understanding as inputs to our creative process (see continuous place-based design).
• Outside interests – the combination of things that interest you outside your day job are unique to you. No one else has this specific range of interests. Bring it into the creative process.
• Your professional palette – in whatever domain you work in, gather examples of the standard examples of ways to do something. It is the equivalent of the landscape painter gathering and mixing their colours before they go out and paint, or the musician practising their scales. These are the ‘standard plays’ that we develop so they are available in the creative moment.
• Example projects – As you find good reference projects, keep a record of them. It might be a detail, something that catches your eye, or something that doesn’t look right. If we capture these examples as we go, it is much easier to draw upon them when we need them.
• Conversations with people – go and talk – and listen! – to a diverse range of people and pay attention to what they say. (Train yourself to be a better listener by using Catalytic Style)

The good news is that our brains automatically gather inputs from the world in which we inhabit. Autosave is on. But to make them more accessible when we need them (and not just available), like an artist, put in the work to curate these inputs – for example, through sketches, mood boards, system mapping or reflective writing. 

Trading posts and the diversity of inputs

Throughout history, trading posts have been centres of innovation because they have been places where diverse cultures have met. According to Csikszentmihalyi (see ref below), cultures are collections of ideas that already exist, which represent domains of input to the creative process. The greater the diversity of cultural inputs, the greater the range of possibilities in the creative process.

If your inputs all come from similar sources— people with the same background, experiences and cultural references— think about how you can expand your field of input.

Stage 3 – Turning the Kalideascope

Having done the work to build and fill your Kalideascope, the third stage is to turn it, intentionally forming new connections between these inputs. 

Ideas often start emerging as soon as we start a project, but creative thinking can often get stuck due to:

• Cognitive ease— when we prefer an existing idea to a new one.
• Sunk-cost fallacy— when we stay committed to an initial idea due to how much effort we have already invested in it. 
• Time pressure— forcing us to the nearest available option rather than spending the time looking for a better idea.
• Distraction— which can cause emotional stress that undermines our pattern-spotting ability. 

In these situations, we can take deliberate steps to ‘turn the Kalideascope’ and unstick the creative process using the following techniques: 

• Ask what if— in this facilitated technique for two or more people, we trick the brain into thinking it is solving a different problem and we use this fresh perspective to rapidly generate a long list of possibilities, among which is likely to be a useful idea. (See Ask What If)
• Use your professional palette— if we have done the work (described above) to gather the standard patterns that are the basis of our craft, then we can use this technique to systematically cycle through these patterns to make new creative connections. (See Using Your Professional Palette)
• Act it out – this technique gets us to shift from spotting patterns with our minds to spotting patterns with our bodies. By going through the motions of a situation – for example, miming walking into space or using a bridge – we bring a physical embodiment into our thinking (See Act it Out).
• Go to sleep – this technique leverages two of the creative functions of sleep: one is to give our active brain a rest; and the other is to allow our REM sleep cycle to go through its process of trying our new combinations of all the things we’ve looked at that day – literally doing the work for us while we sleep.
• Plan your creative routine – Create a daily routine that combines time with people, time managing all the many demands on our attention, and distraction-free time that creates space for us to spot new connections between all our creative inputs.

Building these techniques into our creative process can help to ensure we systematically create the conditions for more, better ideas to emerge.

The Kalideascope builds creative scaffolding

You wouldn’t expect a project manager not to have a plan for managing their project. Nor should we expect an engineer (or other human) not to have a plan for their creative process.

The process of building, filling and turning the Kalideascope establishes the scaffolding for our creative process, ensuring we space for creativity, a wide enough set of inputs and strategies for creating new connections for more and better ideas.

References

Broadbent, O. (2020). How to Have Ideas. In The Conceptual Design of Buildings. Institution of Structural Engineers. https://www.istructe.org/resources/guidance/conceptual-design-of-buildings/

Young, J. W. (2003). A Technique for Producing Ideas. McGraw-Hill.

The Ambition Loop model proposes that system change is much more likely to occur if three stakeholder groups – users (customers or the public), business (suppliers or service providers) and government (from local to national/regulatory bodies) – form a mutually reinforcing feedback loop. 

When the needs of these three groups are aligned, then they can form a virtuous circle of change that can grow, gather momentum and eventually shift the system around it. 

For designers interested in creating system change, the ambition loop model is valuable test of viability in the conceptual design stage. 

The test is simple: Can I describe a viable ambition loop for my proposed concept?

The model for the test is a stakeholder diagram. To create this model: 

1. Draw out the stakeholders involved in a system;
2. Map how they interact.
3. Draw arrows showing how the desires or actions of each group reinforce the behaviours of the next. 

If we can show using this simple model that our concept passes the ambition loop test, then we have a good signal that the idea has the potential to grow and shift the system we are working in. If our concept does not pass the ambition loop test, then we have a signal that the signal we are working in will resist the change we are seeking to make. 

Once a viable ambition loop can be described, the next stage is to test it as the scale of the ‘minimum viable pattern’. 

Ambition Loops in practice: pioneering doorstep recycling

This is the story of how local grassroots activists were able to begin a process that resulted decades later in legislation – the Household Recycling Act of 2003.

The development of doorstep recycling in the UK wasn’t centrally driven, but was pioneered at local scale, and in particular by local activities from Avon Friends of the Earth, a local-level campaigning organisation. 

The context

In the 1970s, manufacturers were shifting towards using more disposable packaging and ending for instance bottle take-back schemes. Meanwhile, public awareness of environmental issues and the problem of waste to landfill was growing. At the time, the UK government judged doorstep recycling to be too expensive to implement. Avon Friends of the Earth saw the opportunity to prove otherwise. 

Although they didn’t frame it in these terms, we can see retrospectively that they were able to establish an ambition loop between three stakeholder groups that enabled their interests to align.

The local community – increasingly concerned about the impact of waste, with awareness heightened by the rubbish collection strikes at the time. 

Business – local businesses willing to buy waste paper as a feedstock if it could get its hands on a supply. 

The local council – saw that local waste disposal costs were rising. Government also had the challenge of how to deal with high levels of unemployment.

Minimum viable pattern: small-scale collection

In 1976, Avon Friends of the Earth began small-scale waste paper collections that collected household paper waste door to door and sold it to a local business that could use this material stream. 

A key element in this process was creating a viable business for receiving and using the waste paper stream. Environmentally-minded business entrepreneurs collaborated to guarantee a market for recycled paper, helping to get the system moving. 

A third enabling factor was leveraging the government’s existing Community Programme, which provided temporary jobs for the long-term unemployed through community-based projects. Avon Friends of the Earth used this programme to fund workers work in their recycling project. 

These basic elements -public interest, business opportunity and alignment with government objectives – enabled kerbside recycling of paper, and later other materials to be demonstrated. And not only did they show that the initiative was viable, they showed it could make a profit.  

Increasing scale

Over many years, recycling initiatives grew scale and this success of these initiatives gave government evidence that they could confidently legislate for recycling. This activity culminating in the adoption of the 2003 Household Recycling Act, which made doorstep recycling a legal requirement for local authorities.

This example shows that when a simple, reinforcing loop – what we call an ambition loop – is set up, it has the power to change a system. But also, that this change can take years, and even decades.

Applying the Ambition Loop in Design

Step 1 – Identify the stakeholder groups

• Users: Who are the customers or public involved? What are their desires. What are their pain points? How is the current system failing them?
• Businesses Which businesses are involved? What are their priorities? What barriers do they face? What shift in operating conditions would make business better?
• Government and Regulation: Which public bodies are involved? What are their ambitions? What challenges are they seeking to overcome? What in the policy landscape is a blocking change?

Step 2 – Draw a self-reinforcing loop

• Try connecting up the stakeholder groups in different combinations to find mutual benefit. 
• Draw an arrow showing how the action of each stakeholder benefits the next stakeholder in the loop.
• Ask how might the loop become self-reinforcing over time, so that the change can gather momentum?

Step 3 – Find the minimum viable pattern

• What is the smallest scale that this ambition loop can be demonstrated?
• Who could you test this minimum viable pattern with?
• How can you gather evidence that this loop is working?

Why Ambition Loops matter to systems designers. 

The systems that we live with are often very resistant to change. Design that parachutes in a new idea with no reference to the needs of the existing system is risky. There is a great chance that the existing system will reject a new idea unless it can help the agents in the system meet their needs better than they can already. 

The ambition loop model provides a useful test to see how our idea of change might be taken up by the system. If yes, then the idea has the potential to create real change. If not, we may need to rethink our approach.

See also

• Continuous Place-Based Design – the Ambition Loop is an example of a test to apply in the Making and Testing phase.

References:

Schumacher Institute, 2023. Bristol’s Green Roots. [pdf] Available at: https://schumacherinstitute.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Bristols-Green-Roots.pdf [Accessed 10 February 2025].

Future Stewards, 2021. 10 Tools for Systems Change to a Zero Carbon World. [pdf] Available at: https://futurestewards.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/10-tools-for-systems-change-to-a-zero-carbon-world.pdf [Accessed 10 February 2025].