Facilitating participation

There are also a range of techniques – widely used in the developing world – for engaging participants in more effective and meaningful ways. Many meetings remain unproductive and uncreative, but they play a crucial role in innovation: they may not always be the place where new ideas first come into people’s heads, but they are certainly decisive in shaping ideas and building support. Much attention is now being given to meetings to make them more effective – sometimes with much more open processes, sometimes with much more formal structures. Face to face meetings remain the most important in generating commitment to innovations. But increasingly technologies of all kinds are helping to transform meetings, enabling people to interact verbally, visually and through simulations.