Explore each other’s minds and support your friends in their great endeavors. Make room for disagreements, listen carefully to understand where your friends are coming from, what they dream of – and how they became who they are.

How to?
The easiest way to do this is to draw random cards for as long as you want. This works really well no matter whether you choose to take turns answering the cards while listening silently to each other og use the cards as a conversation starter where you explore the questions together.

Sometimes it surprisingly difficult to start great conversations with those nearest and dearest to us. We need a conversation starter that allows us to discover the hidden gems in each other’s personalities and connect on deeper or higher levels.

How to?
In general we recommend that you use the guidelines for “our favorite way to use Concopia Cards”-above since the “silent-listening”rule allows for all voices to be heard making space for those of you who rarely speak – and challenging the louder ones in your midst to truly listen.

When planning a party, we carefully choose the setting, food and drinks. But we do very little to secure the most important part of an amazing dinner party: The great conversations. Laying the table with Concopia Cards vastly enhance the chance of a memorable meal.

How to?
Place a card by each seat. Ask everyone to take turns reading their card out and responding to the prompts without the others commenting. If you want to do one more round ask the guests to talk to the person next to them about their cards

If your flow of ideas seems stuck or you need to challenge your own thinking, drawing Concopia Cards on a regular basis might greatly enhance your thinking. Many writers, designers and scientists we know draw a card every morning to sharpen their minds.

How to?
This one really depends on you and your rythms. But some kind of routine certainly makes a difference. It could be a certain time of day - waking up, on your commute, while cooking, before going to bed... It might also be inspiring to write your answer down or record a memo of your initial response. In that way you will generate a lot of very personal perspectives that will be inspiring to revisit during work- or writing-processes.

Concopia Cards are great for boosting creativity within a team or group. The questions inspire participants to put out their tentacles and dare to be brave. The inspirations and questions on the cards will gently force you to explore new perspectives and directions.

How to?
When kickstarting the ideation proces make sure that everyone what challenge you are exploring. Then use “Our favorite way to use Concopia Cards” above. The participants shouldn’t focus on the challenge in the answers - the idea is to bring other perspectives to the table that might help you look in new directions. But AFTER the silent rounds you discuss how the stories shared might inspire your work with the actual challenge.

Mix colleagues from different teams and fields of expertise in small groups. Using the Concopia Cards they will naturally start a cross-pollination process that strengthens their understanding of each other’s roles and inspires them to work together better.

How to?
The more varied the players that more exciting and inspiring this Concopian experience becomes. Try to avoid a classical introduction round by asking the participants to respond to a Concopia Card of your choice that you think frames the task ahead. Start out by answering yourself to set the tone and length. When everybody have responded to the opening question you use “our favorite was to use Concopia Cards” above.

Literally: Latin term meaning “abundance" or "plenty.” In rhetorical theory Copia refers to the abundant supply of knowledge, vocabulary, ideas and inspirations one knows and keeps by heart - allowing the speaker, conversationalist or thinker to come up with relevant examples, quotes or perspectives in conversation and in writing.

Concopially: Copia was used in the early 16th century by the great humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam who recommended that every writer or thinker should have a “Common Place Book”; A personal collection of inspirations, quotations, observations, ideas and intriguing questions that one can always refer to. 

Copia is the stuff great conversations and contemplations are made of. The richer, more varied and more nuanced your Copia, the better. However - in recent years this richness has slowly been withering away as we have come to rely more and more on search engines, the GPS and AI. 

We believe this calls for a reinforcement of our inner libraries, rediscovering our intuitive sense of direction and an eye for the enchanting, unpredictable details in life. Concopia Cards represent 50 starting points - and in the coming years we hope to explore and create many more with a lot of help from our fellow Concopians around the world.

Literally: An imaginary or idealized society. The term was popularized by Sir Thomas More in his 1516 in the book "Utopia." The term Utopian is often used to denounce ideas as being impossible to implement.

Concopially: We live in a world that urgently needs a lot of rethinking. Much of the lifestyle we take for granted today isn’t sustainable, democracies are falling apart, and humanism is under pressure. We need to do some deep thinking and make bold actions.

But far too often the attempts to make great changes are met with an eye-roll from people who say it’s utopian - i.e. impossible - to do anything that matters. It comes in many variations such as “It makes no difference what I do when the system/government/politicians don’t do their job” or “I’m too old to change my habits - I trust the younger generations to make the necessary changes”.

We therefore need a new term that coins the desire to make changes, strive for a better world and reach for the stars. It doesn’t mean perfection, but it makes us believe that every small step matters towards a brighter and more exciting future.

Literally: Latin term meaning “harmony," "unity," or "agreement." It refers to a state of peaceful coexistence, agreement, or a harmonious relationship between individuals, groups, or nations.

Concopially: We believe that a world in harmony should be able to contain differences in cultures, beliefs and interests, and that harmony and agreement are not always the same. In many discussions and meetings we have the underlying aim of convincing the others of a certain opinion or reach consensus. But rather than striving for agreement a Concopian Conversation is a container for respectful divergence.

Using Concopia Cards we are inspired extend our tentacles and share nuances, perspectives and understandings because we know that the others around the table will listen respectfully, listen openly and be truly curious about who we are and where we’re coming from.

Thus - Concopia refers to a togetherness that allows for harmonic divergence.

Literally: An optical instrument that contains mirrors and small gems or beads that constantly form new intricate patterns as they are rearranged and reflected in the mirrors.

Concopially: As we get older and our lives get busier, most of us tend to loose scope. It’s easy to get stuck with a circle of friends who come from the same field and have more or less the same interests, preferences, opinions, number of kids and lifestyle. When our brains are constantly fed the same bits of information we risk significantly limiting the number of new patterns our inner kaleidoscope can create. We need to constantly add new gems to our inner kaleidoscopes if we don’t want to get stuck in our worldviews.

Using Concopia Cards with friends will encourage your circle to break the normal patterns and share insights that might strike chords you would have never imagined.

Using them with strangers allow you to skip the smalltalk – you might find yourself talking enthusiastically to someone for hours without knowing any of the usual basics like where they live or what they do for a living.

Literally: The desire to rediscover a sense of wonder, magic and mystery that counters the idea of disenchantment that Max Weber popularized to describe modern society.

Concopially: The extra enchanted mile we always wish to walk to make sure the ideas we come up with are not only great solutions but also contribute to a more bountiful world. The many challenges of our time – be it the climate crisis, wars, or inflation – all call for an ability to rethink the world. However - many of the important questions are answered too quickly with a solution that simply cuts down or speed things up.

But what if we truly explored the potentials for making the world a more abundant place - and our lives even more worth living.

Concopian thinking calls for solutions that are not only great solutions for the challenges ahead –they are thrilling in their own right. This is also why we’ve designed Concopia Cards the way we have – adding a touch of magic to the very serious and important discussions that are called for in our times.

Literally: Stumbling upon something valuable or delightful unexpectedly.

Concopially: Great conversations and contemplations are often characterized by numerous sparks of serendipity. The surprise when the person we’re talking to utters something we’ve never heard of or the internal revelations that make you scramble frantically for somewhere to write it down. This can certainly happen spontaneously out of the blue. But the chances of an epiphany are greatly enhanced if you bring rich Copia to the table and if you allow outside triggers to collide with your inner thoughts.

In that respect Concopia Cards are almost like a guardian angel that lends serendipity a helping hand. Drawing a card and having to respond it without consulting others or looking up an answer you have to draw on your own Copia to bring stories, insights or relevant knowledge to the conversation. The encyclopedic inspiration on the back of a card brings something new the table that your thoughts can build upon, which enhances insight and presence since most of the things that are spoken have never been conceived of or formulated like that before.