Meeting room design based on experience production and the creative process: a conceptual development of meeting rooms for the meeting industry

Abstract: In the new post-industrial society creativity and knowledge are the new business resources. The experiences and Creative Industry as well as new creative demands in traditional industry set pressure on the Meeting Industry to promote and enhance the creative processes during business meetings. Business investing in conferences and creative workshops will demand increased return on investment. The aim of my study was to integrate theories of the Creative Process with theories of Experience Production and Experiential Learning with the Meeting Environment context. For this I used benchmarking of established meeting rooms as a platform to develop a new concept of meeting room environment. Using the theory of Interactive Creativity Landscape, ICL I developed the concept of the Experiential Creative Meeting Environment, ECME. The conceptual development of this Meeting Environment include components of the theory of Experience Production and the Experience Process of erlebnis and erfahrung, the Experiential Learning Process of Kolb and the Classical Phase theory by Wallas and Cropley for the Creative Process. I suggest in my study that the ECME constitutes of three different creative rooms for action, interaction and retreat designed to support the creativity process. The results from my study have applications for the Meeting Industry by providing new design ideas for meeting settings. My study is a first step of the understanding of how experiences and creativity can be combined to improve the design of meeting rooms. My contribution is a first step towards a theoretical conceptualisation of the Meeting Room Context.