Collaborative Innovation: What Turns It Off And What Turns It On

Neural pathways relating to the traumatic experience can get the most activation which reduces the formation of other pathways concerned with adaptive learning and behavior (Perry, 1995). Chronic trauma is likely to produce a similar “stuckness” arising from the exposure to chronic traumatic threats such as social expectation and demand, bullying, coercive control, competitive materialism,
and the isolating and dissociating impacts of the critical elements of social media. It is these non-specific traumas that contribute to feelings of isolation, dissociation, vulnerability and defensiveness that are prevalent in the modern world, even when there is no distinct traumatic event.

People who deal with other people’s problems, such as managers, HR departments, Board members and executives are susceptible to what is described as “vicarious trauma” or “secondhand experience” of traumatic events (Canada Life, 2019). This is often experienced in medical and mental health professionals (Baird & Kracen, 2004). There are many stressful and traumatic influences that affect the population and I propose that, collectively, these are causing a down-regulation of collaboration and co-operative creativity and an upregulation of self-concern, dissociation and isolation. The question now is: how do we alter our psychological state so that it alters our state of conscious awareness in order to revive our natural disposition for social interaction and collaboration and the subsequent benefits of co-operative creativity and innovation?

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