jansn

17 Nov, 2008

Creativity = (play – fear) + actions

Posted by: Bob Jansen In: Creativity

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In my continuous quest to learn more about creativity I was watching a video on TED. Called ‘Creativity and play‘ by Tim Brown. I didn’t know what to expect. Inspired by Tim’s talk I thought to share my thoughts.

To be creative and move forward we need to play. That’s what Tim’s message is. Children play a lot and that’s when they explore their world for new possibilities, opportunities and things to learn. While playing they are more involved in open possibilities than adults. They don’t fear judgement by their ‘peers’ upon their actions. The more a child is trusting the environment he is in, the more he will play and forget everything that is happening around him.

To play we need to trust our environment and peers. Becoming part of the adult world, the first things that will be removed are our toys. All those things we enjoyed and had fun with. Lego that we used to build all those nifty constructions! Not good as Tim Browns says, and I agree.

Brown acknowledges a three stage process: ‘Playfull Exploration’, ‘Playfull Building’ and ‘Roleplay’. In short:

Playfull Exploration is about going out and use play to discover new stuff
Playfull Building is about executing your creative plans, still part of the game and not a different process. It’s just the moment you switch to build something that is tangible and could be discussed with others. During this process creative solutions for problems is key.
Roleplay if there’s nothing to build, let’s say your desinging a new service process, use roleplay instead of playfull building.

So fast forward, we aren’t kids anymore. What do you need to implement play?

Besides an office that has room for relaxation and thinking, you need stuff that’s laying around to play with. Stuff you can throw at each other. Stuff you can use to show what you mean. Stuff that recharges your creative mind when having a ‘creativity block’.

Nobody within the professional field will be able (and probably doesn’t want) to play all day. ‘Play mode’ is the equivalent to divergent thinking. As a professional you need to make choices, therefore converge your thoughts. According to Tim Brown, those two go very good together.

I’m still learning and figuring how to switch between those modes more easily as I do know. Anybody that has tips and tricks on that, please let me know . I’d like to start some discussion and get more thoughts about this out there.

To conclude. One of my Twitter friends shared this video. A french speaking girl makes up this fairytail about ghosts, monsters, wizards, frogs. Not only very cute, we need to learn from this.

It’s time to press play.

Once upon a time… from Capucha on Vimeo.