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Created and shared by Dr Arthur Shelley 2025

Research-informed practice �and practice-informed research

Triversary Event, October 14/15, 2025

Dr Arthur Shelley, Intelligent Answers

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Agenda

  • Share a few insights as a “Pracademic”
  • Explore why research (academics) and practitioners don’t talk
  • Introduce the potential synergies of socialised learning
  • Discuss the implications of environment on collaboration
  • Highlight some additional useful resources to use later
  • Enjoy engaging in inclusive conversations to repeat “at home”

Created and shared by Dr Arthur Shelley 2025

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CoCreative Approach to Collaborative Research

EVERYONE is capable of cocreating research insights…

IF they are open to and apply these characteristics and in a safe inclusive social environment:

  • Open mind listening to different ideas
  • Insatiably curious and collaborative. 
  • Invest to build trusted networks across disciplines. 
  • Respectfully engage in “Creative Friction” to encourage safe experimentation. 
  • Proactively enable the full potential of others through inclusive social interactions. 
  • Being SELF adaptable and help others adapt. 

Created and shared by Dr Arthur Shelley 2025

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Why don’t theoretical researchers �and practitioners interact?

Created and shared by Dr Arthur Shelley 2025

 

  1. Academics don’t read practitioner literature.
  2. Practitioners don’t read academic literature.
  3. Synergy opportunities are lost.
  4. Language nuances are barriers to understanding.
  5. Visualization helps creative knowledge co-creation.
  • There are nuggets of gold in both sides for all parties.
  • Stronger links and respect between theorists and practitioners will benefit both.
  • These links important to the growing profession of knowledge management?

Some of my insights from interacting as BOTH theoretical researcher and practitioner…

Source: Shelley, (2017) KNOWledge SUCCESSion. Sustained performance and capability growth through strategic knowledge projects. Ch 9. Business Expert Press

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Different Focus and Purpose (Impact?)

Created and shared by Dr Arthur Shelley 2025

Stated with a smile and greatest respect to both…

Source: Shelley, (2017) KNOWledge SUCCESSion. Sustained performance and capability growth through strategic knowledge projects. Table 9.1. Business Expert Press

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Socializing ideas to stimulate cocreation

Created and shared by Dr Arthur Shelley 2025

Source:�Bennet & Shelley, 2024

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Innovative Creativity (Bennet & Shelley, 2024)

“The greatest meaning of life comes with the expansion of co-creating, sharing knowledge that facilitates the creation of new ideas and potential innovation.

Both consciously and unconsciously, as we interact with others, we develop a deeper understanding of others and ourselves and an appreciation for diversity, expanding the domain of potential ideas and creating collaborative advantage.

We are able to gain the advantage of other’s thinking at or above our personal level of thinking, while simultaneously creating in a way that is uniquely ours, concurrently individuated and one.”

Created and shared by Dr Arthur Shelley 2025

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Achieving Theory & Practice Alignment

“Recognising the value of association,

we prepare our minds by looking at the world �through multiple frames of reference,

interacting intelligently with others,

reaching for a place where creative ideas emerge,

in all of which, emotions have a role to play.” (Bennet and Shelley, 2024)

To thrive, research creativity requires outward focus and inclusion of feedback from practical experiences. �Knowledge sharing, collaboration and cocreation across disciplines accelerates mutual learning and benefits generation.

Created and shared by Dr Arthur Shelley 2025

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Visualisations trigger Collaborative Conversations

Creative Environment insight:

“Augmentation plays a key role, including virtual reality technologies as well as social media platforms that may stimulate and support learning and the creation of new ideas.

As can be seen through inclusion of social media, an enriched environment is also focused on the social aspects, that is, engagement with other people.

People do not learn in isolation but are very much engaged in a continuous process of social learning.” (Bennet & Shelley, 2024)

Created and shared by Dr Arthur Shelley 2025

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Expand your Comfort Zone to break free of patterns

Created and shared by Dr Arthur Shelley 2025

Where more creative �magic happens

Your Comfort Zone

Psychological safety awareness�“Danger Zones”

You can’t:

Listen with your mouth open,

Learn with your mind closed,

or

Lead with a dispassionate heart.

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Achieving Synthesis (Bennet & Shelley 2024)

Things that must occur:

  1. Thorough knowledge of one or more research domains.
  2. Thorough immersion in a field that practices the domain.
  3. Attention on a problematic area of the domain.
  4. Idle time for incubation that allows insights to emerge.
  5. Ability to recognise insights as one that helps resolve the problematic situation.
  6. Evaluation and elaboration of insight in ways that are of value.

Created and shared by Dr Arthur Shelley 2025

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Summary Insights

Created and shared by Dr Arthur Shelley 2025

  • Facilitate Collaborative Conversation Spirals (everyday!)
  • Leverage creative conversation starters to encourage socialisation
  • Engage teams in Creative Friction (deliberate constructive disagreement)
  • Deliberately (& safely) engage people outside familiar comfort zones
  • Focus on generating new insights, not transferring existing knowledge
  • Stimulate MindFLEX interactions to use and adapt tacit insights in innovation
  • Focus on outcomes more than outputs for long term creative development
  • Learning is a critical outcome of every interaction �(and intangible benefits are usually more important than the short-term outputs)

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This session was Co-Created from…

(2007)

(2024)

(2009)

(2021)

(2017)

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Free Resources that can help CoCreative Collaboration

Insights from related publications:

  • Instant Insights https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeqsNgzJnPotjBhDeLlScZrflDM4n-W1f
    • Short video “Conversation Starters” to share perspectives
  • Applied Social Learning Ecosystems https://journals.sfu.ca/jalt/index.php/jalt/article/view/19
    • Leading Cocreative environments to innovate

Created and shared by Dr Arthur Shelley 2025

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Created and shared by Dr Arthur Shelley 2025

Extension Thinking Resources

Explore these resources and use as triggers for Conversation starters �in diverse groups (from across research and practice fields

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Collaborative Conversations Spirals

© Arthur Shelley 2024 Permission of the author required for commercial use or storage.

© Arthur Shelley 2021.

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MindFLEX

© Arthur Shelley 2024 Permission of the author required for commercial use or storage.

Shelley 2021, Becoming Adaptable

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Innovating initiatives with creativity in mind

© Arthur Shelley 2024 Permission of the author required for commercial use or storage.

“Regardless of the domain of knowledge in which you engage, creativity is all about perceiving new patterns in the mind,

and innovation is about the useful application of those patterns.”

Bennet and Shelley, Innovative Creativity. 2024

Phronesis: Wisdom in determining ends

and the means of attaining them.�Practical understanding and sound judgment.

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Innovative Creativity (Bennet & Shelley, 2023)

“Would you buy a new suit without trying it on?

Try your idea out and see how it fits, how it feels.

The practical nature of your new idea, of what you are trying to do, is important. And share it with trusted others.

Innovative Creativity is more than having ideas, and even more than making those ideas work. �It also involves having others like your ideas, showing them the value of those ideas.

And one way to do that is to bring them in as partners in creating those ideas. �This can make your idea even better.

© Arthur Shelley 2024 Permission of the author required for commercial use or storage.

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