Tim Brown is the CEO of the “innovation and design” firm Ideo and he has a very interesting presentation on the powerful link between creativity and play that is worth a view.
I know I’m going off the formal BI track here but as I said the other day, BI is about creativity and some of the things Tim entertains us with in his presentation hit home - like fearing the judgement of our peers and letting adult behaviour get in the way of ideas.
So here’s one little way of breaking the ice in meetings and encouraging people to shed a few inhibitions and maybe even suggest some crazy ideas.
With a little help I discovered purely by accident about a year ago that laptop lids have a fantastic matte ’sketchpad surface’ presumably designed with crayons in mind. Dell’s Latitude D820 isn’t bad but you can’t beat a MacBook Pro - even white works…
I’ve proudly carried a variety of designs about with me over the last year (box jellyfish, Lightning McQueen and my recent favourite ‘Giraffe Eating Pear’). They never fail to get a comment. Opening up the laptop lid atop a conference podium or round a boardroom table gets people smiling and that gets people talking and that as we all know, is half the battle.
If you’re interested in this stuff then you might also want to check out:
- The National Institute for Play
- IDEO
- TED - Inspired talks by the world’s leading thinkers and doers
