The Power of Play

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“If science always insists that a new order must be immediately fruitful, or that it has some new predictive power, then creativity will be blocked. New thoughts generally arise with a play of the mind, and the failure to appreciate this is actually one of the major blocks to creativity.

Thought is generally considered to be a sober and weighty business. But here it is being suggested that creative play is an essential element in forming new hypotheses and ideas. Indeed, thought which tries to avoid play is in fact playing false with itself.
Play, it appears, is the very essence of thought.”
-David Bohm

Last evening I watched a PBS special on the Power of Play and was fascinated for an hour with the way animals (including humans) use play...

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The Next One

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During a Sponsor Session for a recent event, a Sponsor challenged us to make ‘this one’—the one for his organization—'the best.'

The comment provoked Matt to recall something Frank Lloyd Wright said a half-century ago. Matt shared the memory this way:

“It was in an interview in the mid 50s with Hugh Downs, I believe. Asked which was his best building, Wright said, ‘my dear boy (anyone under 60 was a boy to FLW), the NEXT one.’"

Wright’s comment captures the essence of why both collecting and using feedback is of such importance. From a design sense, feedback is what links the past to the future in a meaningful way. Yet, it seems all too rare that we treat the collection and offering of feedback seriously, let alone systemically.

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Who are the Tomorow Makers?

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The creative process includes the entire method by which ideas are discovered and translated into useful tools, products, and services and used in the “marketplace”.
-Matt and Gail Taylor 1981

Years ago, during my experiences with the Learning Exchange in Kansas City, I learned how to perturb the process so that people and teams became aware of their own ability to consciously create tomorrows of their choice.

With a few simple rules, design teams rich in diversity - inner city teachers, kids, parents, suburban teachers, business executives, professors - were able to step up to challenges well beyond what was assumed possible...
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