2015: Hunt for Lacunae

Lacuna - something lacking / missing.

A hunt for lacunae means finding what's missing. The challenge: things may be missing but not in an obvious way. Future possibilities no one has thought of yet, that would fill as-yet unperceived needs/wants/gaps.

Area of Examination Example: For a youthful and rapidly growing city like Airdrie, there may be things -facilities, activities, institutions, businesses, projects, social organizations, events, missions- that no one has even imagined yet. Or perhaps imagined by a few in some fuzzy form that needs fleshing out or some new angle / creative combination.

This Airdrie Innovation Institute came about from such a hunt for lacunae. But there must be many more missing things / lacunae..

There are a few ways to hunt:

1. comparative - best practices from others/elsewhere: look at what others around the world are doing / bragging about, and adapt some of their interesting things to your own area of examination.

2. expand your area of examination

3. bottom up: analyzing statistical data for trends and insights

4. look for gaps between and beyond, missing combinations, missing adaptations/themifications, missing integrations / aggregations and disaggretations

5. synergy map / matrix: given existing things, look at what might be missing in the gaps between them, or what creative combination might be missing:

Example SYNERGY MATRIX for a few Airdrie institutions: