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How do Spaces for Creative Dialogue evolve and how are they experienced in practice? In this paper we will present findings on how space is experienced by informants in the structure of a dialog seminar in an innovation research project. We are investigating the relationship between the physical context and mental content, between the created mental space and the experience of physical space aiming to support innovation.
In a multidisciplinary research project, there is a need for strategies to create physical spaces that support the sharing of ideas. In the project studied here, the aim of the research was not only to share ideas, but to develop strategies and methods for radical change in production systems in manufacturing industry from an engineering, innovation and design research perspective. In a way the research project itself was under the demand to be innovative and different competences had to work together. The researchers have to communicate in order to innovate and to develop an understanding and this communication did take place in several physical spaces.
In the method of dialog seminars the explanation of the organisation is focused around the structure of the seminar, but the physical places is an unexplored part of the dialog seminar. The success of the innovation process today depends on the use of both organizational structure and physical space. Furthermore, the organizational structure and physical space must be designed to encourage the very communication that spurs innovation, a view put forward by Allen and Henn (2007). So, how was the project organised to encourage a dialogue that spurs innovation and how were the physical spaces experienced?

dialogue; creativity; physical space; thinking style; group idea.