Born Innovators
As children, we are born with a natural curiosity and incessantly ask, ‘why?’. It is a sign of our intense fascination with the world around us as we try to unearth the mysticism which shrouds Mother Earth in all her head-scratching complexity and jaw-dropping beauty. As we mature and enter adulthood, most of us lose this unabated curiosity and assume or pretend we know the answers, borne out of a fear that we will be perceived as unintelligent, unworldly or inexperienced. According to Tony Wagner, who lectures at Harvard University, the average child asks 100 questions a day, but by the time the child is 12 or 11 he or she has figured out that it’s much more important to get right answers than to keep asking thoughtful questions.
However, when we meet people who have managed to hold on to their childlike curiosity and insatiable appetite for learning, we admire their ability to defy convention and go against the status quo. I believe exceptional innovators are ones who are able to transcend such social taboos and conventions and retain their childlike playfulness. Take the late Steve Jobs as an example whose “very simple focus was on trying to make something beautiful and great. That simplicity seemed almost childlike in its purity.” (Jony Ive — Apple’s Chief Design Officer).
And this revelation that playfulness and innovation go hand in hand is certainly nothing new. Officials at Google and 3M found decorating offices akin to primary school classrooms or soft play areas resulted in dynamic, creative and stimulating environments which encourage workers to reconnect with their inner child to produce ideas which have shaped and transformed the world as we know it. Similarly, Lego’s Serious Play is being used by many companies who recognise that by providing their employees with “grown-up” Lego they can tap into hidden creativeness and physically build metaphors of their organisational identities, personal brands and challenges they may be facing into.
As I observe my surroundings here in our in-house innovation lab, enigmatically named Room Y, I see in my periphery a beach ball, table tennis, astro turf,pipes painted in all of the colours of the London tube lines and Lego amongst other things. All of this injects a sense of fun, playfulness and creativity which gives the room character and helps to inspire those who work in it. Perhaps most importantly, it allows me to carry the spirit of my inner child into the workplace giving me freedom to experiment, challenge and create.
So, how can we liberate our inner-child and enjoy the freedom that comes with play and experimentation, after all, “great is the human who has not lost his childlike heart” (Mencius):
- Allow yourself to play, and re-learn how to play from children (dogs make perfect substitutes in the absence of children)
- See the world with fresh eyes each and every day and allow your curiosity to be roused by the magical, inexplicable phenomena in the world.
- Believe there is something to be learnt from every person you meet, even if you need to dig a little deeper with some more than others.
- Approach all places, events, things, people and ideas with a sense of discovery and look at them through tourists’ eyes.
- Challenge everything you know. Be restless in your challenging.
By cultivating the above five key principles we can help ensure our young finger painters can succeed as thriving innovators as they reach adulthood. By remaining playful in our approach to life and work, we allow ourselves to tap into a time before our self-limiting belief system took hold. We are able to psychologically relocate ourselves in our childhood when a cardboard box could have been an igloo in Antarctica or a NASA space shuttle hurtling towards the moon. The sky was the limit and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t continue to be so as we journey through life and enter “grown up” world. Picasso famously remarked that “every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up”. This problem is by no means insurmountable if you make life, once again, your playground and nurture the inner child within.
