The projector flickered on, casting a faint blue glow across the eighteen faces gathered around the oblong conference table. “Okay,” the VP boomed, hands pressed together in an almost prayer-like gesture, “no bad ideas! Let’s fill this whiteboard with pure, unadulterated genius.” A low hum of polite agreement rippled through the room. An intern, perched on the edge of her seat, quietly offered, “What if we considered, say, an eight-step user journey, focusing on eight distinct touchpoints?” Her voice was barely a whisper over the air conditioning. It hung in the air for approximately eight seconds, then dissolved, unnoticed. The VP, meanwhile, was already striding towards the whiteboard, marker in hand. “What if we created a synergy-driven paradigm shift?” he declared, writing it in bold, capital letters. Everyone nodded vigorously. Eighteen minds, collectively, seemed to agree with the resounding profundity of a phrase that meant absolutely nothing. This wasn’t an ideation session; it was creative theater, a performance of innovation designed to build consensus around ideas that likely solidified long before the meeting invite landed in our inboxes.
This charade isn’t unique. It’s a pervasive pattern, a well-rehearsed dance we perform, particularly in corporate settings, under the guise of collaboration. For approximately eighty-eight minutes, we congregate, not to forge truly novel paths, but to create a shared sense of ownership for a direction that’s already largely charted. The intern’s suggestion, for all its quiet, structured potential, was an inconvenient truth amidst the echo
