The multisensory creative experience: new creative workshops co-created by Repères, Institut Lyfe, and Creative Emulsion

Dive into the multisensory creative experience for a prosperous business future !

In the effervescence of the 21st century, creativity has emerged as an essential and indispensable lever to help companies navigate constant challenges.

Creativity is often perceived as a purely cognitive process, but it is in reality a multimodal process resulting from the integration of brain networks and sensory modalities. Sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste - the true architects of consumers' emotional, hedonic, and behavioral responses - all impact creative thinking.

Scientific studies have revealed that sensory modalities act specifically on creative processes such as divergent thinking (i.e., the association of ideas) or convergent thinking (i.e., the creation of a new idea from the combination and selection of different stimuli).

Boosting creativity by engaging the senses in a multisensory immersive space

The teams from Repères, the Institut Lyfe Research and Innovation Center (formerly Institut Paul Bocuse), and the agency Creative Emulsion are joining forces to offer companies access to creative approaches enriched by sensory stimulation.

Using The Lab in the Bag technologies, they offer creative workshops in a multisensory immersive environment, activating relevant sensory modalities at different stages of the creative process.

Case study: irresistible legume-based recipes for young people

A study demonstrating the contribution of the senses in a creativity workshop was presented at the latest PANGBORN sensory congress, held in Nantes last summer. You can download the poster presented here.

The brief was to create legume-based recipes that would be irresistible to young French people.

These workshops were conducted in collaboration with students and chefs from Institut Lyfe.

3 workshops were held under standard conditions, without using the immersive room's features. 3 other workshops were "augmented" by sound and visual effects in 360° projection, chosen on the basis of scientific publications reporting their effects on cognitive processes.

Ideas amplified by multisensory immersion

The final recipe proposals were evaluated by chefs, who highlighted the better performance of the immersive multisensory approach, with ideas that were more original and more detailed, significantly outperforming those generated in a standard environment.

More engaged and more creative participants

Analysis of participant behavior highlighted greater involvement in immersive settings :

During the divergence phase (brainstorming), immersive groups continued generating new ideas throughout the entire time allotted for the task, while standard groups exhausted all their ideas before the exercise ended.

During the convergence phase (i.e., creating a new idea from two stimuli), participants were more focused and were less likely to become distracted or digress onto other topics.

Conclusion: an immersive, multisensory creative future

Multisensory immersive technologies, combined with the expertise of creativity specialists, open up new horizons for innovation approaches.

Contact the Repères, Institut Lyfe and Creative Emulsion experts to learn more and immerse yourself in multisensory creativity:

•          Adriana Galiñanes Plaza – Research Manager, Repères : a.galinanes@reperes.net 

•          Estelle Petit – Innovation Manager, Institut Lyfe Research Center : epetit@institutlyfe.com 

•          Véronique Bonnet – CEO Creative Emulsion : veronique.bonnet@emulsioncreative.fr