Name:  Jeff Merrell

Company:  Northwestern University Master’s Program in Learning & Organizational Change

Area of Expertise:  Linking knowledge-sharing practices to organizational strategy, with a particular emphasis on socially-responsible activities.

What sparks your creativity?

Being around other people who are engaged and enthusiastic about whatever it is they do. I love working with people who get all geeked-up about their profession or some hobby or avocation.

Give us an example of a creative output that you’re particularly proud of.

I teach a graduate course in the Master’s Program in Learning & Organizational Change at Northwestern. The course is called “Creating and Sharing Knowledge” and it’s about how we get better at combining the “people things” and the “technology things” to foster knowledge sharing and creation in organizations. We try to walk-the-talk in the course by actually using technology to facilitate knowledge sharing in the class in innovative ways. This year I created a Ning community for the class using a free social-network/community platform (http://www.ning.com/). And it’s turned out great. The design of the course activities combined with the Ning technology has inspired an incredible amount of creative, intelligent dialogue among the students — outside of class time.

What was one of the best meetings you’ve ever attended? What made it so great?

Recently I attended a meeting of about 40 Evanston community leaders who are working on various projects related to the local organic food movement. It was a broad-based group of people. The purpose of the meeting was to start envisioning new ways to collaborate and have greater impact — within Evanston — of efforts to grow, market and consume more locally produced, healthy foods. What made the meeting so great is that even though few of the participants knew each other, the ideas that emerged were innovative and insightful. And I think that was in part due to process (we used a World Cafe approach – www.worldcafe.com) and in part to physical space and setup (we literally transformed a large open auditorium into a “cafe” with small tables arranged like as if in a restaurant). The conversation was much more engaging and energetic.

What recently sparked your curiosity and how did you satisfy it?

I’m fortunate to work at Northwestern, in an environment where someone who is curious about pretty much anything can find a way to satisfy it. Usually without leaving campus. But beyond that, what typically sparks my curiosity these days is food. As in – finding delicious new things to eat (first) and then learn how to make (second) if time and skills permit. I recently made a trip to Bogota, Colombia and discovered ajiaco, a great hearty comfort-foodish soup. I think I’ve got to make some soon.

Jeff – I found a recipe for Ajiaco Bogotano for you (and anyone else who gets hungry when they see this photo) to try: http://www.andreasrecipes.com/2006/12/27/ajiaco-bogotano-colombia/