Kaiser, P. (2002b) 'On the Design of Creative Collaboration', position paper for the Managing as Designing conference at Cape Western University in Cleveland [online]. Available from: http://www.kaiserworks.com/duoframe/duoideas.htm; accessed on 23/04/05

Talking something to death usually means to prolong the discussion of something past any point of possible action, which is certainly a danger even in creative work. But here I mean it in a somewhat different sense. For usually such a thing as a grant proposal demands a greater certainty and exactitude than is really present yet, and so, despite the best of intentions, it helps bring about a pompous insincerity that can kill the underlying creative impulse.

Worse, it can even bypass that creative impulse altogether, as one sees all too often in works created only to look good on paper. The caption and illustration in the catalog, website, or newspaper play a far greater role in the project's perceived success than the actual experience it engenders. As Shelley Eshkar has pointed out to me, the very method employed in art and design schools - the "crit," or critique - provides inadvertent training for this kind of sham, for here it's the student's performance in explaining and presenting his or her work that often speaks louder than the work itself. "Speaks" is the right verb here, for by this point it's all a matter of words, even though many of the best works are practically mute.

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