I’ve just been reading Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth – which outlines the way his design studio approaches projects. There are 43 items, and it’s all well worth a read, but the points that stood out for Bracket were:

#3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

#16. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

#32. Listen carefully. Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

My interpretation of these points is that:

- We can learn a lot from the process of engaging in collaborative working. If we know how to do it effectively, we can allow it to take us to new places.

- An end product is an achievement, but it’s definitive – once it’s done, it’s done. The knowledge gained from working with others and from our own experience of being involved can be taken with us long into the next project and beyond.

- Collaboration can allow someone to grow and develop – both in terms of creative potential and in longer term individual capacity.

Read the full manifesto at www.brucemaudesign.com/incomplete_manifesto.html.

(The manifesto is licensed under Creative Commons-Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0)