
We are built by play
Reflections on the recent #breakout event with Dr Stuart Brown (National Play Institute) and Brendan Boyle (IDEO)
#breakout2018 was hosted by Project Play, an initiative led by Dara Simkin. It was held in Melbourne on the 4th of September, 2018 and featured talks from the Dr Stuart Brown, Director of the US National Institute of Play and Brendan Boyle, Partner for IDEO in San Francisco.
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Dr Stuart Brown
We are built by play, and
We are built to play
The opening line and central thesis of Dr Stuart Brown’s address to the #breakout audience was itself a playful invitation to question our assumptions about play and its role in human intelligence.
In simplest terms, play is built in, much deeper than we think.
Play is not something we ‘do’, but something we ‘are’. It isn’t something we ‘think about’, its something that generates our capacity to think in the first place. It is not necessarily a conscious activity, either. The neural origin of play behaviour is not found in the cortex of our brains, rather, in the brain stem, an anatomical feature that is almost indistinguishable from other mammals who also play.
Brown set the scene with the observation that nature is much more playful than we give it credit for. What we often attribute to the ‘laws of nature’ are in fact, evidence for mechanisms that guide the natural world to explore, test and generate new growth; Spirals (from the macro patterns of our universe, to the micro patterns of our DNA), branching (of trees, roots and brain cells), and crystals (of diamond, snow and imagination); all biological systems guided by nature and guiding nature to new formations and combinations of matter.
Within this system — inseparable from it — humans exist. With our own complex cognition, informed by natural systems, combined with input from other humans and self-awareness, play provides the built in mechanism for humans to grow their brains; synaptogenesis, the creation of new connections through novel and rewarding interactions.
Play, Brown argues, is a fundamental survival drive that reveals to us our innate talents and intrinsic motivations.
He proposed a general framework for different types of play that represent these talents and motivations.

Indulge me for a moment, while I compare this to the job clusters proposed by the Foundation for Young Australian’s in their highly influential ‘New Work Order’ research report series….

Brown continued by taking us through a ‘taxonomy of play styles’ (bonding play / attunement, object play, social play, narrative play, ritual play and aesthetic play) at lightning pace, demonstrating the various kinds of play and their role in helping us to not only make sense of the world, but also develop our sense of belonging within it.
Most notable was Brown’s discussion of the social functions of play and his research into the consequences of ‘play deprivation’, which were equal measures fascinating and startling.
Almost every mammal that exhibits play behaviours has some form of social play that is best described a ‘play fighting’. Dogs do it, cats do it, bears do it, monkeys do it, humans do it. This ‘rough and tumble’ serves several purposes including social regulation and the establishment of ‘limits’ between the parties involved. In a way — though it sounds somewhat contradictory — play fighting helps to build empathy and understanding, it is not done with the intent to hurt and while it is often quite physical, is generally non-violent.
What Brown has found in his research into these non-violent simulations is that there is one group of society who generally do not engage is this kind of play during their adolescence. Murderers.
In his study of inmates who were convicted of violent offences, Brown found murders had no memory of ‘normal’ rough and tumble play as a young person.
Similarly, over the past twenty years, there has been significant research done into the consequences of depriving children of bonding opportunities / attunement with their parents. In general terms, without a secure attachment (formed partly through these attunement interactions), children often grow up to develop anxious or avoidant acopic behaviours that often hamper their flourishing in relationships and society in general.
Brown summarised this in a particularly pithy way; if you don’t play well in your childhood, you tend to be over-reliant on societies institutions to scaffold your sense of identity and structure your interaction with others.
In other words; people who don’t play well with others, grow up to become total pains-in-the-ass in their adult life.
What Brown’s research shows us is that through the various types of play, we develop the essential skills that have made humans the intelligent, social creature that we are today.
Through bonding play, we learn our innate self of self and form meaningful emotional connections with others.
Through object play, we developed our capacity to understand and interact with the world (futher reading: hand / brain co-evolution is a well-studied area of evolutionary psychology)
Through social play, we learn the limits of ourselves and others, we learn self-control and appropriate social regulation.
Through narrative play, we learn to communicate our inner experience and perception of the world.
Through ritual play, we learn to share our experience and systems of meaning with others, creating a platform for new social play opportunities.
Through aesthetic play, we learn to manipulate our perception and form new artefacts that enter the world as raw materials for future object play, or as props that support future narrative / ritual play.
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Brendan Boyle
Over an illustrious career at the helm of one of the most influential design firms in the world, IDEO, Brendan has pioneered many of the techniques that are now second-nature to seasoned ‘design thinkers’ around the world.
In his talk, Brendan outline five principles for how play can influence the innovation process for businesses

Learning from Failure
In the history of IDEO’s play lab, only a handful of the toys / products developed in their lab have ever really ‘made it’. Brendan went to great lengths to emphasise the importance of celebrating your failures throughout the entire innovation process.
Talk less, do more
The bias towards action is a common characteristic of productive creatives. They find a way to overcome their internal filter and let all ideas out, regardless of how ‘silly’ they may seem, so that they may combine and build on the ideas of others. Which leads to the third point…
Collaborate
The best products and innovations are ones in which the client and design team have shared an active collaboration, building together, rather than outsourcing their innovation.
Make Others successful
Brendan believes that the best innovations come from teams that work well together. In these teams, the ‘leaders’ are not appointed, but flux according to the challenges of each task. Great teams work together to succeed and support each other, they don’t hog the credit for work or try to steal the limelight.
Be Optimistic
Finally, great design is enabled by leaders with powerfully optimistic outlooks. They do not let self-doubt hold them back. They acknowledge and celebrate failure as an essential part of the process, and as such they succeed no matter how profound the challenge.
The takeaway
#Breakout2018 was a celebration of the essential nature of play and what it can teach us about the way we think and work. Stuart Brown highlighted the building blocks we need to acknowledge in order to reconnect with our playful nature, Brendan expanded on this to show how a playful approach to work can unlock the creative potential of any organisation.
