Play

Special Feature: Prisms of Play P. 94

Learn the Rules Before Playing the Game P. 60

Blockchain: From Play to Innovation P. 42

Inside the Black Box of Digital Transformation P. 14

Play

a journal of strategic insight and foresight VOL. 28 2018 $12 USD $15 CAD £7.50 GBP

Display Until 8/31/2018

Publisher

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cognizant.com

Theory, So What? 6

Co-Publisher Alan Alper

Signal, So What? 8

Publishing Advisory Council Scott Friedmann Dr. Andy Hines Martin Williams Christer Windeløv-Lidzélius

Insight, So What? 10 Inside the Black Box of Digital Transformation 14

Head of Media & Publication Ashley Perez Karp Managing Editor Esther Rogers

Serious Play: From eSports to Digital Transformation 20

Media & Publication Manager Mira Blumenthal Senior Editor Taylor Dennis

Blockchain: From Play to Innovation 42

Additional Editing David Brock Will Novosedlik Dominic Smith

Feelings at Play: Finding Radiant and Radical Ways to be Present With Cancer 52

Art Direction / Design Sali Tabacchi, Inc.

Learn the Rules Before Playing the Game 60 No More Time Outs: How Playful Parenting Is Reinventing the Parent-Child Relationship 84 Special Feature: Prisms of Play 94

Additional Design Jemuel Datiles Illustration Jennifer Backman

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United States 649 Front Street, Suite 300 San Francisco, CA 94111 United Kingdom 85 Great Eastern Street London, EC2A 3HY United Kingdom Corporate Office Cognizant Digital Business 500 Frank W Burr Boulevard Teaneck, NJ 07666

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As co-publishers of MISC, our aim is to provide a new level of understanding in the fields of insight and foresight. We navigate the blurred boundaries of business, design, and innovation through in-depth articles from some of the preeminent voices of design thinking, technology, customer experience, and strategy.

Idea Couture is a global strategic innovation and experience design firm. It is the innovation unit of Cognizant, and a member of Cognizant Digital

Business. We help organizations navigate and innovate in complex and uncertain environments. We use design thinking methodologies to solve problems and exploit business opportunities – generating new growth, meaningful differentiation, and economic value.

By taking an insight and foresight lens to our explorations in MISC, we can thoroughly examine the impacts and opportunities for change in a vast range of industries, allowing businesses to plan for the present and the future.

uh.edu

The University of Houston’s Foresight Program offers a Master’s Degree in Foresight, a four-course Graduate Certificate, and a week-long intensive bootcamp overview, each of which prepares students to work with businesses, governments, non-profits, and others to anticipate and prepare for the future.

Established in 1974, it is the world’s longest-running degree program exclusively devoted to foresight.

Some students enroll to become professional futurists, while others seek to bring a foresight perspective to their current careers.

Students have three major areas of focus: understanding the future, mapping the future, and influencing the future, blending theory and practice to prepare graduates to make a difference in the world.

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Kaospilot is an international school of entrepreneurship, creativity, and leadership. It was founded in 1991 as a response to the emerging need for a new type of education – one that could help young people navigate the changing reality of the late 20th century.

The program’s main areas of focus are leadership, project management, creative business, and process design. Promoting a hands-on approach, case

studies are replaced by immersing students in real projects with real clients. Out of more than 600 graduates, one third have started their own company, NGO, or other similar initiative, the remaining hold management positions.

Kaospilot also offers a wide range of courses for professionals in creative leadership and educational design.

cedim.edu.mx

Based in Monterrey, Mexico, CEDIM takes a design, innovation, and business comprehensive approach to education. Design is promoted as a core philosophy, and the faculty consists of active, young, and experienced professionals who have expertise in a broad range of fields. Students are engaged with real and dynamic work projects, and are encouraged

to immerse themselves in these active projects in order to participate in the realities of the workforce long before graduation.

As a result, students at CEDIM develop an extensive sensitivity to their social, economic, and cultural environment, and go on to make real, pragmatic change in the world of design and innovation.

izational change, students in the program address the complex dilemmas of contemporary society.

This interdisciplinary program interweaves design and foresight methods with social science, systemic design, and business, while providing the skills and knowledge to identify critical issues, frame problems, and develop innovative and humane solutions to better implementation plans.

ocadu.ca

OCAD University’s Strategic Foresight and Innovation program (SFI) can claim a place at the leading edge of pedagogy and foresight practice. The SFI program is creating a new kind of designer – a strategist who sees the world from a human perspective, rethinks what is possible, and imagines and plans a better future.

Recognizing the increasing importance that design thinking can play in positively impacting society, enhancing business success, and managing organ-

Co-Publishers

Publisher / Editor-in-Chief Idris Mootee

Contributing Writers Dr. Tania Ahmad Charles Andrew Dr. Melissa Atkinson-Graham Lena Blackstock David Braid Juliana Ciccarelli Maggie Coblentz Nic Connolly Laura Dempsey Taylor Dennis William Dowling Christina Doyle Farzad Fazeliani Jamie Ferguson Ian Foster Katie Hill Sydney Kidd Anita Lin Yehezkel Lipinsky Christian Madsbjerg Alexander Manu Louis Marino Tom Masterson Loie Maxwell Dr. Marcos Moldes Jaraad Mootee Tim Morgan Maryam Nabavi Marlene P. Naicker Christopher Neels Will Novosedlik Maya Oczeretko Zachery Oman Kathleen Pekkola Kuhan Perampaladas Paul Rowan Valdis Silins Dominic Smith Eric Taylor Bruce Thomas Dan Winger Dr. Ted Witek Corey Wu Lily Zhang

MISC (ISSN 1925-2129) is published by Cognizant Digital Business.

All Rights Reserved 2018.

Email misc@miscmagazine.com The advertising and articles appearing within this publication reflect the opinions and attitudes of their respective authors and not necessarily those of the publisher or editors. We are not to be held accountable for unsolicited manuscripts, artworks, or photographs.

All material within this magazine is © 2018 Idea Couture Inc.

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Contents

Cognizant Digital Business recognizes the coming convergence of new technologies – automation, the sensor-enabled world, AI, 3D printing, etc. – as well as the shifting demographics, expectations, and regulations that are creating a context for a new age of business.

Cognizant Digital Business brings together digital strategy, deep industry knowledge, experience design, and technology expertise to help clients design, build, and run digital business solutions. The practice provides managed digital innovation at enterprise scale, which includes services around Insight, Foresight, Strategy, Ideation, Experience Design, Prototyping, and a Foundry where pilot programs are moved to enterprise scale.

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Welcome to the Play issue!

Historically, play has been considered to be the opposite of work; these two concepts are considered independent and mutually exclusive. We work to get things done, and we play to have fun. These days, however, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to separate the two.

Jean Piaget, a pioneer in the world of child development and psychology, offered the world insight into the cognitive development of children. He also identified that what adults refer to as “play” is a systematic process of learning that has delineated stages, from birth to adulthood. This notion

can be extended into organizational development and innovation management – we should look at these things in developmental stages as well.

As Piaget said, “What is the goal of education? Are we forming children that are only capable of learning what is already known? Or should we try developing creative and innovative minds capable of discovery from the preschool age on throughout life?”

The same could be said for corporations. Corporate entities have matured into well-oiled machines, with people coming in and out of their systems and continuously optimizing them. But when they discover the new

reality – that is, that reinvention and innovation are their sole sustainable competitive advantages – they have trouble mobilizing their machines to think differently and go on a journey of discovery and learning.

Companies must learn that creative and innovative ideas do not just appear, nor are only certain people capable of coming up with them. Rather, as Abhishek Nirjar explains in his book Entrepreneurship Development, creative ideas are the result of trying to solve a specific problem or achieve a particular goal using tactics like research and inquiry, strategic framing, and rapid experimentation.

photo: idris mootee

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By focusing on a problem that needs to be solved and playing with various approaches and ideas, organizations can conjure up creative solutions – even if their internal structures and systems stifle creativity and people forget that the business actually exists to serve its customers.

Play is not random. It can help with the “professionalizing” of innovation and should be held as an important competency for corporations, right up there with operational excellence and the quality of products and services.

Author Joseph Chilton Pearce said that play “is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can

unfold.” Now, I wouldn’t go as far as saying that, but there are certainly many kinds of play that can help facilitate strategic direction for the directionless.

In this issue, we look at different notions of play and explore what it means from a variety of perspectives.

In design researcher Lena Blackstock’s article, “Establishing Equilibrium Through Creative Play,” she explores how play can help us look at work-life balance as a more fluid concept; in “No Half Steppin’,” Nic Connolly considers how hip-hop can influence and inspire business leaders to be more playful; and in our

special feature, “Prisms of Play,” three of our foresight strategists explore the different ways we use play and how these methods may come to shape our world in the future.

I hope you enjoy this playful issue.

Idris Mootee Publisher and Editor-in-Chief

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Today, there is a complex relationship between the way we view ourselves and the jobs that help define us. Work defines many aspects of our lives – even down to our everyday interactions. It provides an important sense of purpose and meaning by helping to shape us as individuals and craft our identities. When we meet someone new, for example, the question “What do you do?” inevitably emerges as a way of getting to know them.

However, as the processes and spaces in which we work continue to change – by becoming more precarious and/or automated – we find ourselves putting more weight on other means of defining ourselves outside of work. The meaning we take from our experience is playing an increasingly important role in helping us understand who we are, and the time we spend pursuing our hobbies and interests comprises a significant portion of that experience. This shift toward the personal could be a very good thing. After all, leisure activities provide an outlet for self-expression and personal growth that many of us will not – or do not – have in our professional lives. Imagine having more time to devote to this.

Of course, time is only so useful if we don’t develop the resources we need to pursue leisure. It’s true that serious leisure has given rise to certain tools and services that help us find interesting activities and hobbies, or that allow us to further refine our non-work expertise. But there are so many more opportunity areas that these tools could be touching on. For example, what if they better accounted for the requirements for developing feelings of community, purpose, and meaning?

In this regular feature, we pick a social theory, explain its relevance to everyday life, and then explore how the theory’s implications could impact the future of your business, industry, or category.

So What?

Opportunities in Serious Leisure

Leveraging Leisure Finding Purpose and Meaning in Playtime B y d r. M a r c o s M o l d e s

We constantly search for purpose and meaning in our lives. All too often, we look to our jobs and workplaces to provide this sense of self. However, as technology is progressing, things are becoming more automated, and worker alienation is spreading across the labor

market, we are expanding our search for meaning beyond the workplace. But where exactly can we turn to find it?

The answer is already staring us right in the (off-duty) face: leisure activities. As our day jobs continue bringing us less self-fulfillment, we are increasingly turning to the activities and hobbies we enjoy in our down time to fill the gap. Eventually, we will reach a tipping point at which our leisure activities clearly become more than something we do “just for fun.” The question is, how much of a role can these activities play in helping us find personal fulfillment?

photo: Curtis Macnewton

Theory, so what?

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Emerging out of the field of leisure studies in the 1980s, “serious leisure” examines the ever-increasing role that leisure activities play in helping people shape a sense of self and fulfillment. Robert A. Stebbins’s seminal piece, “Serious Leisure: A Conceptual Statement,” highlights the importance of leisure activities in our lives. Identifying three different categories of serious leisure – amateurism, hobbyist pursuits, and career volunteering – Stebbins looks at how employees’ leisure activities can help them contribute value to the organizations they work for, or even to their professional fields as a whole.

While leisure activities are seen as being less serious or less valuable than paid work, Stebbins argues that non-work activities are important spaces for practice and play. From science fiction fans who organize amateur conventions to weekend runners who lead community running clinics, the notion of serious leisure provides a framework for understanding how our non-work activities can play a role in our communities and societies.

There are infinite possibilities and opportunities that could emerge if we were encouraged to take leisure more seriously, but we need to be asking the right questions. For example, how could leisure be used to give us a sense of purpose? And what could companies do to encourage using leisure activities to strengthen social networks and empower their communities?

We’re already using leisure for these purposes, and we’ll only continue to leverage it more moving forward.

Signals of an Ongoing Move Toward Serious Leisure Meetup.com Launched in 2002, Meetup has become a platform and organizing tool for a variety of hobbyists, fan groups, outdoor enthusiasts, community activists, support groups, and more.

DeviantArt DeviantArt is the largest online social network for artists and art enthusiasts; it serves as a platform for emerging and established artists to exhibit, promote, and share their works with an enthusiastic, art-centric community.

NeonMob NeonMob is a platform for designers to create original trading cards that others can discover and enjoy. Independent artists and brands can both contribute to the growing marketplace.

Current and past partners include the NFL Players Association, Care Bears, Domo, Tarzan, and Zorro.

International Quidditch Association This international network of quidditch leagues governs the sport based on the rules outlined in the Harry Potter novels. The network has branches in 16 countries and is continuing to expand steadily.

Thinking Ahead / What kinds of platforms or services can companies develop to support people in thinking more seriously about their leisure activities? / How can the leisure activities of your employees help you grow your business? / What kinds of change could your organization be a part of through enabling and encouraging serious leisure in the workplace? //// Dr. Marcos Moldes is a Resident Ethnographer at Idea Couture.

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So What?

A Look at White-Box Testing

Preparing For the Coming of Artificial General Intelligence Advances in AI From Isaac Asimov’s foreboding Three Laws of Robotics to Elon Musk’s caution about the threat AI poses to humanity, there has been no shortage of warnings about the inherent danger of AI. As we continue developing and deploying new tools with machine-learning capabilities, these concerns will only continue to grow.

Already, the media is treating AI like some form of super intelligence; Musk himself referred to work on AI as “summoning the demon.”

Concerns about advances in AI may not be entirely unfounded. After all, there is no reason to believe that AI could not one day overcome human intelligence.

In 1965, Irving John Good postulated that machines with superhuman intelligence could continue to further improve their own design, resulting in an “intelligence explosion.” This would trigger what Vernor Vinge would later term the coming “technological singularity.” Looking toward the potential existential risk that AI could pose to the future of humanity, thought leaders like Elon Musk and the late Stephen Hawking have lobbied governments for better regulation of AI.

The Danger of Prediction

photo: idris mootee

Signal, so what?

In this regular feature, we highlight a weak signal and explore its possibilities and ramifications for the future of your business, and how to better prepare for it.

by Jaraad Mootee

As we develop advanced AI to handle more of our everyday tasks, we will continue to give greater responsibility to our technologies – from assisting in surgery to managing our 401(k) portfolios. However, machine-learning models are developing rules for themselves that are difficult for humans to debug and understand: To us, these technologies comprise a black box of learned associations. DeepXplore is the first “white box” testing model for deep-learning systems. The system, according to creators Pei, Cao, Yang, and Jana in a paper presented at the 2017 Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP), “finds thousands of incorrect corner case behaviors (e.g. self-driving cars crashing into guard rails and malware masquerading as benign software) in state-of-the-art deep-learning models with thousands of neurons trained on five popular datasets.” Using a white-box approach, DeepXplore will shed light on previously unknown black-box processes by virtually simulating misleading real-world inputs to retrain and debug AI. However, even with DeepXplore, it’s impossible to cover all potential scenarios – and it’s even harder to know why an AI makes mistakes in the first place.

How can we gain greater knowledge about the decision-making processes of deep-thinking AI (and the implications of those decisions), and how can we design AI in a way that gives us greater control over the information it can access? It comes down to the question of who will validate the decisions that machines will make on our behalf.

There are some obvious future uses of AI, like self-driving cars, home assistance for the elderly, and improved genetic testing for certain diseases.

But what about the things that we don’t want AI to analyze? A recent study by Stanford’s Michael Kosinski and Yilun Wang, published in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (February 2018), used AI to distinguish the sexual orientation of participants based solely on their faces. Given five facial images per person, the AI could identify a person’s sexual orientation with 83-91% accuracy.

The study was met with concern over sensitivity, personal privacy, and potential for misuse. This work raises important questions about what we deem appropriate for analysis. For example, if AI could predict the likelihood of a romantic pair breaking up – perhaps it could even assign a relationship expiration date – would that mean they shouldn’t get together? Although we may be naturally curious, we cannot allow AI to influence us with an invisible hand – prediction is a dangerously sensitive business.

Maintaining Cultural Sensitivity A big part of how we see, understand, and make sense of the world is through cultural and contextual cues. As humans, we understand that there is an appropriate time, place, and way to say certain things. In this regard, AI has no greater capabilities than we do. Sensitive subjects, like race, gender, and politics, all have nuanced boundaries and social limitations – how can a machine learn these soft “rules” that even humans struggle to navigate?

In Safiya U. Noble’s book, Algorithms of Oppression, for example, she found that search engines actually hold a bias based on the user’s race. Through both external research and her own experiences, Noble discovered that her auto-complete for Google searches like “Trayvon Martin” and “George Zimmerman” had separately biased responses – Google called one a hero, and one a thug.

Others researching machine-learning biases, such as Harvard professor Dr. Latanya Sweeney, found that when she Googled her own name, the ads she was served up said things like: “Latanya Sweeney, Arrested?” and assumed that she had a criminal record and required a background check. Even in the Google Play Store, those who downloaded Grindr – a dating app for gay men – were also suggested sex offender apps.

We need to teach our machines to practice more cultural sensitivity than humans have historically displayed. Machines can learn to assess each scenario based solely on its specific context. Rather than reflecting our collective bias, thoughtfully designed AI has the power to actually reduce and remove human prejudice.

Why It All Matters Humans will continue giving machines knowledge, and machines will continue sharing it back with us in new and more useful forms. However, because the information AI provides human users is dependent on what we teach our algorithms, our understanding of those algorithms is paramount. The problem is not in machine learning – it’s in machine training. The ways we train our machines will have very important short- and long-term implications, and there are many questions we must begin asking now: What data sets are usable? What kinds of data require consent to collect? Most importantly, how do we respect the right to privacy while also gaining the information we need about potentially harmful individuals or groups?

Warnings from the likes of Musk, Hawkings, and Vinge should not be ignored – we need to be worried about the power we are giving to AI, especially considering the implications of an AI with tangible responsibility and power acting on an incorrect judgment. Together, we must decide what the boundaries are, and we must train for human-positive outputs.

But these discussions and decisions will take time. In the short term, the economic cost of manually scrubbing through bad results will be high. In the long term, there are larger questions we’ll need to agree on to guide our machines and their learning. We must decide what data we leave behind for future generations. //// Jaraad Mootee is a former consultant for Deloitte and is currently working on an emerging technology startup.

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Enter Play Play reinvents fun. By using the term “play” to understand the pleasure of building a commitment to not committing, thinkers across the social sciences and humanities have reconsidered what we, as consumers, think about as “fun” and where we go looking for it. So, what does a “playful commitment” look like?

In this context, “to play” is to have an awareness of a fixed set of expectations or “rules,” and to then use those rules as a reference point; by engaging with or bouncing off of our own understanding of the rules, we can cherry-pick which aspects we embrace, ignore, defy, or make fun of. The act of determining what direction to take that bounce can feel empowering – especially if it aligns with values or communities we want to align ourselves with.

Video game designer and play expert Ian Bogost describes how the fun of play is partly anchored in the limits that narrow our focus and the pleasure of stretching, bending, and selecting our way through defined parameters. According to his work, the labor of definition – that is, of deciding where, when, and how to look for what inspires us – is critical to what makes play fun.

A Commitment to not Committing

Fungible Fun: Playing With Your Food B y D r. Ta n i a A h m a d

If you sometimes eat gluten-free without having a gluten allergy, or occasionally forgo that burger for a vegan meal option, you are engaging in dietary play. If you took it upon yourself to learn about the ketogenic, Whole30, or paleo diets and don’t actually follow any of them, yet still try to eat fewer carbs, more protein, and more

carefully selected produce, you are also engaging in dietary play.

Recently, while conducting ethnographic work in the food space, my team was explicitly asked to exclude people from the research sample who had food sensitivities or allergies, as well as those who followed any specialized diet. The client wanted to focus on “mainstream” consumers – a challenge, considering today’s

Fascinatingly, despite our attempt to identify “mainstream” consumers by excluding people who reported food sensitivities, we found that consumers consistently brought up their relationships to allergen-free and other specific ways of eating and drinking.

People described how and why they were inspired by specialized diets. We spoke with people who associated gluten-free foods or meat alternatives with healthy eating, and we met people who admitted that they regularly consumed foods despite a suspected sensitivity to them. We also talked with people who learned all they could about specialized diets and certifications, but never intended to follow those dietary rules closely. Instead, they learned about specialized eating in order to distill guidelines or principles that they could use to direct a personalized sense of “eating well.”

How people borrow from a range of specialized diets, inconsistently and unsystematically, is a particularly confounding trend in the ways consumers interact with food. If many people don’t actually follow any particular diet closely, how does learning and reading about different ways of eating influence or inspire how, when, and why they consume what they do?

Loving the Labor of Definition

photo: Taylor Kiser

Insight, so what?

In this regular feature, we explore a topic through an anthropological lens in order to better understand its impacts on a wide range of industries.

contemporary food culture, in which the growth in allergen-free products has far outstripped the demographic quotient of consumers with sensitivities. Part of the trouble has been the non-specific ranges offered by medical statistics, which indicate that anywhere from 4% to 30% of adults in the US have food allergies. There are many explanations for and implications of this divergence in the numbers, but here I’d like to focus on one of its broader cultural effects: consumer relationships to specialized diets.

What does this mean for food retail? It could mean that consumers are increasingly fueled by an interest-driven commitment to experiment through play – but you knew that already. Instead, the details of how and with what resources people develop and come to their most deliberate food choices can nuance what it looks like to play with food.

Understanding how the idea of mainstream consumption is being shifted – not only by people who need it to shift, but, more importantly, by people who don’t – can help businesses determine market segmentation strategies that mirror and build on actual consumer experiences and practices.

The act of expressing interest by discerning boundaries seems to be what makes experimental play fun. There are two critical aspects of this. First, this act of discerning never happens only once. Instead, it is iterated, or recycled, as experiences and resources build on one another. For example, the Zone diet may inspire consumers to play with portion size and carb intake, but they may find it time consuming to prepare certain alternatives in a family-friendly way. This may lead them to revisit the shape and extent of their play in the future. Here, the fun comes from deciding what to learn about, how to borrow from it, how to incorporate it into everyday living, and how to revisit that set of decisions.

The second critical detail is in the environmental factors that make the act of defining and limiting feel so empowering to consumers. For the labor of definition to be meaningful, it also has to feel like an accomplishment – which it absolutely is in a world replete with a smorgasbord of choices and suggestions.

As offerings and opportunities seem to proliferate, imposing limits becomes a powerful way to generate a sense of individualized, intentional action. What play means – and, by extension, what the fun of definition looks like – depends on how players understand and work with their worlds in order to also work against them.

So What?

Putting the Fun into Fungible Why is this important for food? Play may not just be about sensory delight. If fun is anchored in the pleasure of making decisions when one has a plethora of options to choose from, the field of play now involves the labor – the active series of tasks – of continually setting and revisiting limits. This ongoing project of redefinition balances plenty with individual agency, and knowledge with cherry-picking. The persistent lure of making playfully discontinuous choices shapes the human experience of what fun is and how it is situated.

If humans were consistently rational, insights research would not be necessary. Being part of this eminently human club of inconsistent conduct does not mean we are broken, volatile, or imperfect. Instead, it is an opportunity for understanding. It means that the ordinary things we do demonstrate the elastic and fungible ways that we interact with the wealth of suggestions that surround us. Defining why, where, and how we exercise that fungibility, while continually revisiting our experiences, is what fun feels like today. //// Dr. Tania Ahmad sometimes eats vegan, gluten-free, high-protein lunches and is a Senior Resident Anthropologist at Idea Couture.

// As offerings and opportunities seem to proliferate, imposing limits becomes a powerful way to generate a sense of individualized, intentional action. //

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The Next Move: Play

The Virtue of Play

remain competitive.

The Protestant work ethic is foundational in our society, and it is typically glorified as one of the most important virtues for people and businesses to focus their efforts on.

Businesses seldom stop to question how hard they should be working – or when working hard becomes an excessive vice. Though not a vice in itself, when brought to the extreme, working hard without exploring can create large blind spots for a business.

Let’s take Walt Disney as an example. In 1919, Disney was hired

by The Kansas City Star newspaper as a cartoonist, but was soon fired for being too lazy and lacking imagination and creative ideas.

Play is one of the most important practical virtues that businesses should be fostering. There are many ways to define “play”; for the purposes of this article, we will do so using two important characteristics.

To play, one must (1) explore something new, and (2) understand the rules of the game.

In this conception, the nature of play is exploratory and constrained.

Exploration is necessary for a business to constantly find new ways to stay relevant among competitors, while constraints are necessary for and by definition. If a game has no limitations or rules, people will not want to play it.

In business, one way to define “the game” is by the characterization that firms must fight for customers to buy their products or services. If people are not engaging with a company or purchasing its products and services, then the company is not winning the game. Although there are many other credible definitions we could use, these will not be explored here.

Excess of Play: Too Much Exploration In business, an excess of play is typically equated with too much risk taking. This is usually seen as a worse vice than deficiency of play.

Regardless, Aristotle would argue that companies should avoid both vices. While companies that explore too much without obeying the rules may be able to think of new and creative ideas, their lack of structure often prevents them from implementing their plans. Elon Musk said,

Play Analysis: The Golden Mean

By Corey Wu

Deficiency of Play: Too Many Rules

In his writings about practical wisdom, Aristotle states that to take the virtuous and ethical action is to achieve the golden mean between two extremes (which he calls “vices”). For instance, acting with courage is virtuous, while having a deficiency of courage is cowardice, and having an excess of it is recklessness. For Aristotle, any virtue taken to an extreme is a vice – you can definitely have too much of a good thing.

In other words, while it is clear what you should not do, the virtuous action depends on the situation. There is no single best move that can be applied to every circumstance.

Individuals and businesses alike must constantly calibrate their understanding of their environments, while organizations must develop and rely on a strategy for finding the “virtuous” act that can withstand disruption. In the face of constant change, today’s consultants should have an Aristotle-inspired answer to the question of what comes next: “Well, it depends.”

Companies that are fully deficient of play are stuck following far too many rules without exploring other possibilities. These companies put their heads down and execute consistently, and many of them have great relationships with the public.

However, as soon as a new idea comes along in such a company’s industry, their current business offerings become obsolete – and they have no backup plan to help them

The Golden Mean: The Perfect Balance of Rules and Exploration The result of sufficient play is a business that supports the ongoing discovery and delivery of ideas and solutions. Achieving the golden mean for play will not guarantee security for any company – but the alternatives of deficient or excessive play are far riskier.

An important aspect of any strategy involving play and risk is the diversification of efforts and facilitation of

multiple iterations. It is inevitable that some ideas will fail, but companies need the funding and structure to allow for long-term exploration. With this approach, a company can survive in its current state while keeping an eye on the future and testing out new ideas.

In response to losing Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, the Disney brothers and their team continued to play, and they developed Mickey Mouse, who soon became the face of Disney. Over the next several decades, Walt Disney would go on to release feature films and even open his own theme park.

Disneyland has undergone a number of expansions and has a larger cumulative attendance than any other theme park in the world.

“To some people, I am kind of a Merlin who takes lots of crazy chances, but rarely makes mistakes.

I’ve made some bad ones, but, fortunately, the successes have come along fast enough to cover up the mistakes. When you go to bat as many times as I do, and continually improve upon your mistakes, you’re bound to get a good average.”

– Walt Disney

Future Moves: The Playbook It is clear that companies should be striving to achieve the golden mean for play, but the larger challenge of doing so is identifying where the golden mean lies in each industry or competitive landscape. As innovations become more commonplace and growth is increasingly considered a baseline expectation, companies will need to constantly rethink their capabilities and game plans to ensure they stay in the game.

So, when designing your business’s strategy, you shouldn’t just ask where and how to play – you should also ask how much. ////

photo: idris mootee

“For all the virtues will be present when the one virtue, practical wisdom, is present.”

Aristotle

If we consider the golden mean for businesses looking to incorporate play, the two vices would be (1) having too many rules, and (2) allowing too much exploration.

Here, “too much” refers to an imbalance between rules and exploration – the optimal number of rules would be contingent on the level of exploration, and the ideal level of exploration would depend on the underlying structures that support it.

“On balance, I’m a bigger fan of Edison than Tesla, because Edison brought his stuff to market and made those inventions accessible to the world, whereas Tesla didn’t really do that.”

Disney learned about a lack of structure the hard way too. Disney and his brother Roy became very successful with their Oswald the Lucky Rabbit animations, which were distributed by Univeral Studios. However, the rights to Oswald – along with most of Disney’s animators – were taken from Disney because he did not hold ownership of the character. Due to the lack of structure that Disney had set up, he was not able to retain and capitalize on his initial ideas.

Corey Wu is an Innovation Analyst at Idea Couture.

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Inside the Black Box of Digital Industrial Transformation

rethink the role and impact of the CTO and CIO. Digital has entered its next phase.

With the proliferation of sensors and the promise of machine learning, the Digital Industrial Economy has officially arrived. Digital industrial transformation, also known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, is transforming practically every human activity: production, resource use, interaction with humans and machines, education, work, governance, business – you name it.

Though digital industrial transformation can take many different forms, one way to define it is as the integration of digital technology and IoT into all areas of business. This integration causes businesses to operate differently, and it forces each organization to constantly iterate and play with new ideas. Companies must move beyond a legacy business model, legacy system, and legacy process, instead mapping these to a new digital vision that can drastically improve customer experiences and business performance.

A core driver of digital industrial transformation exists in the “industrial” part. All machinery and industrial applications will soon be equipped with sensors and connected to the IoT. Basically, the IoT is anything interconnected by some form of network, and there will be two new classes of devices:

easy to get caught up in change for the sake of change – or whatever pleases the analysts.

Organizations should start by considering their desired future state and business needs, and then determine how to leverage IoT technology, rather than forcing an application for it.

Another key component of this type of transformation is the application of blockchain. Blockchain can potentially fill three important gaps in designing enterprise IoT architecture: 1 Blockchain can strengthen IoT communication by providing trust, ownership, and transparency.

2 All IoT transactions in blockchain will be kept up to date; they will essentially be verifiable and available to every party.

3 Through blockchain, digital agreements can be used to enforce business conditions on IoT interactions.

1 Devices that have not traditionally integrated data network connectivity and can now do so.

By Idris Mootee

The most commonly used phrase these days for a CTO or CIO is “digital transformation.” Today, companies in almost every industry are trying to go digital or become digital – or at least act more digital. Digitization of business processes and operations is one thing, but when digitization is done in the context of a company’s strategic future, intent, and shifting

customer needs, it’s a different story.

And when companies start thinking about re-architecting with the latest technology so that they are prepared for the next 15 or 20 years instead of playing catch-up, that is also a different story. No longer are companies building software or running IT for operations; instead, IT is becoming the primary driver of business innovation. Embracing this shift requires everyone in the company to

Future enterprises will be thinking through the lens of the Internet of Everything (IoE). But they will need to look at more than just the things connected to the network – instead, they must consider the entire ecosystem of each IoT project.

Importantly, the role of data cannot be overlooked. The organization must understand what data they need, what data they can access, what data is required to automate, and how the utilization of the IoT will affect the lives of employees. When thinking about transformation and the various threats to survival that it brings, it’s

photo: idris mootee

2 New networked devices with fundamentally new capabilities.

The benefits are not limited to the above. This game-changing system architecture is likely to revolutionize the way IT systems are built entirely, because it has the potential to eradicate most hacking and fraud activity. “Smart contracts” are another innovative aspect of blockchain.

When traditional written contracts are used, the understanding is that each party must adhere to the terms of the contract or risk being sued by the other party. However, the actual process of taking legal action is time-consuming and expensive. Smart contracts eliminate this problem by making it nearly impossible to conduct transactions that violate the original agreement.

Digital transformation is not about an end state. To understand what type of up-skilling is needed, an organization’s leadership must determine the requirements specific to leading a digital company. Though they may not have the same technical skills as some of their functional leaders, the senior leadership should still be aware of relevant emerging technologies and able to speak to how those developments could come to affect their industry. The team should also be unified in its approach.

Everyone should have the same building blocks informing their understanding. They should also be using the same narrative of transformation, with the goal of equipping the organization with the agility required to handle change. There is no end point, as technological disruption is ongoing. Those who think disruption is only about migration to the cloud or putting products on apps have a very limited view of digital transformation. Today, things aren’t changing in a linear way; they’re changing exponentially. It’s not good enough to catch up to your competitors: You need to lead the industry in some aspect. Here, speed and agility trump everything else. Your digital industrial transformation should allow you to play the continuous innovation game.

So, what does an enterprise-wide digital industrial transformation framework look like? It should have the following components: 1 A well-developed set of foresight scenarios illustrating the desired state of the future, which is supported by key market and technology drivers showing disruption opportunities.

2 A well-documented Customer Experience Gap Map that spans across different products and operating units based on future-state scenarios.

3 A business design architecture showing the use of blockchain and other new technologies that can help achieve operational agility to support the strategy.

4 A culture and leadership team that encourages play and experimentation with leaders in each domain and business unit (e.g.

Digital Officers).

5 A plan to drive workforce enablement that is aligned with the organization’s transformation mission and purpose. This is wider in scope than the need to train and up-skill employees.

6 A full digital technology integration roadmap that specifies how and when to phase out legacy technology, partially due to the inability of this technology to be updated and modified.

Digital industrial transformation is one of the most significant revolutions to hit the business world since the introduction of digital technologies and network computing. Management systems and processes are already heavily driven by the presence and availability of big data, while the proliferation of sensors, advanced robotics, and machine learning are opening new possibilities. Transformation is not a catch-up process, but rather an arms race for industry leadership. It changes fundamental aspects of a business’s ability to compete, including issues related to human capital, knowledge management, business design, technology, product marketing, and use of capital.

But this transformation doesn’t only need new tools; it needs a new management mindset and organizational design. Though it does not start from technology, transformation is very much anchored in an organization’s ability to make technology work and leverage it to leapfrog the competition. This is the next phase of transformation. //// Idris Mootee is Global CEO of Idea Couture.

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B y A n i ta L i n

Creativity needs to stop being seen as an impalpable gift and start being seen as a skill like analytical thinking or time management – one that can be improved and developed. However, there is no “creativity potion” a person can take; instead, creativity requires an environment conducive to cognitive dissonance and curiosity, in which creativity is allowed to bubble to the top. One way to create such an environment is the creativity gym: a space to train one’s creativity, and/or an environment to optimize one’s creative flow.

We spoke to three key stakeholders about their version of the creativity gym: Grace Hawthorne (Adjunct Professor at Stanford d.school), Stephan Kardos (Founder of The Creativity Gym), and Will Burns (CEO of Ideasicle and Forbes contributor). Our conversations show how the creativity gym is gaining popularity across educational institutions and communities, as well as how new experiences and expectations for white-collar workers to exercise their minds, intellect, and creativity are emerging.

Work Out Your Brain: Creativity Gyms

Stanford d.school’s Creativity Gym

illustration: sali tabacchi

Hawthorne teaches a Creative Gym class at Stanford’s d.school to help build students’ creative confidence and sharpen their design thinking skills. The class offers personal skill-based creativity exercises to truly nourish creativity at an individual level. Hawthorne’s role as a facilitator parallels that of a personal trainer at a gym: both provide real-time and personalized coaching on targeted exercises to build optimal minds and bodies.

If there isn’t a one-size-fits-all guide to getting physically fit, there certainly isn’t one for building creativity.

Build Your Mental Core Creativity is not just acquired knowledge, like riding a bicycle.

Your mind is a muscle that can be trained – and your creativity, as a function of your mind, has the same capacity.

As Hawthorne explained, “You need a strong mental core no matter what industry your playground is in. I can increase my creative capacity and surpass yours, if you stop working at it.”

Hawthorne is also the founder of Paper Punk, a company that produces innovative paper-based building toys intended for children and adults. Paper Punk toys allow users to build their mental cores through the act of playing by making.

In Hawthorne’s mind, the characteristics of play – the opportunity for interaction, spontaneity, discovery, and reactivity – nurture creativity. Her Creative Gym class and Paper Punk products both use such characteristics to train people’s minds, but they do so in divergent ways and for different audiences. Yet both succeed in fostering curiosity and increasing people’s capacity for creative thought.

The Community-Focused Creativity Gym in Vienna The Creativity Gym, led by founder Stephan Kardos, emerged from OpenIDEO’s Creative Confidence challenge, where participants were asked to think of ways to stay creatively confident throughout their lives. Kardos’s team became fascinated with the idea of working out your brain, leading them to establish The Creativity Gym in Vienna as a side project. The Creativity Gym offers free monthly workout sessions with exercises targeted at helping people rediscover their creative capacities, skills, and tools. The organization aims to generate a creative community while providing community service. As the gym grew in popularity, Kardos began to experiment with other workout formats, such as Creative Prisms, a speaker series composed of individuals who succeed and thrive by living a creative lifestyle. Kardos believes that a creative lifestyle is different than a creative profession, and he strives to prove that any white-collar professional or student can and should have creative confidence. “I believe that creativity is an innate skill that just requires training,” he remarked.

Accessibility of Creativity Kardos’s creativity gym addresses misconceptions around creativity, challenging the notion that only talented creative professionals (e.g. artists, musicians, dancers, etc.) can exercise creativity. This outdated paradigm leads people to believe that creativity, as a skill, is not accessible to them.

However, elusive “soft” skills like creativity are essential when tackling novel and complex problems in any field. The facilitated workout provided by The Creativity Gym in Vienna is completely accessible to everyone in the community, and the program has a strong impact on anyone looking to explore their own creative capacities. This access is the first step in creating a class of workers from all fields who feel confident about their own creativity and recognize a responsibility to demonstrate creativity on a daily basis.

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The Autonomous Creativity Gym Burns’s dream, as explained in his 2017 Forbes article, “We Need a Creativity Gym to Expand our Minds, Not Our Bodies,” is a self-directed space that facilitates a creative experience. This idea came to life after Burns realized that while we all have spaces to socialize, focus, and co-work, there is no space people can go to foster and stimulate their creativity. His ultimate vision to fill this gap is a building with various rooms offering experiences that have been shown by scientific studies to enhance and prime minds for creativity. Some examples of the rooms include a prescriptive bar where people are given the optimal amount of alcohol for creativity (detailed by Jarosz, Colflesh, and Wiley in a 2012 study in Consciousness and Cognition), menial tasks rooms where creativity is heightened via the distraction of working memory (a phenomenon explored by Christoff, Gordon, Smallwood, Smith, and Schooler in a 2009 article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), or a walking room filled with treadmills (as walking improves creativity by 60%, according to a 2014 study by Oppezzo and Schwartz for Stanford University). As more research studies on creativity are conducted and rooms are iterated upon, the experiences offered in the space could become increasingly targeted and effective. Moreover, the space’s target audience would be workers who are professionally dependent on their creativity (e.g. advertising agency workers, designers, photographers, etc.) and looking for a competitive edge. Users would pay a set membership fee, which would allow them 24/7 access to this space. In this way, the business model would be similar to the model employed by the co-working space giant, WeWork.

Free Play Burns’s vision of the creativity gym’s future is based on his belief that creativity is an innate skill that everyone possesses.

“I think every person on Earth is creative, and that’s what makes us human,” he reflects. His vision for the space also parallels children during free play, offering an interesting perspective on creativity. The freeing and self-directed environment of this gym would enable adults to reconnect with their innate imagination and creative capacities, in their own world and at their own pace, and the experiences provided by the space would allow users to take their ideas and iteratively manipulate them across different contexts.

This mimics how children create detailed and massive alternative worlds in their heads when playing with their toys – a process often discouraged or hindered as they grow up.

// If there isn’t a one-size-fits-all guide to getting physically fit, there certainly isn’t one for building creativity. //

Essential Ideas Creativity gyms offer a glimpse at the remarkable potential of developing a creative and innovative future. For these initiatives to succeed, two key ideas must be accepted: 1/ Creativity will be a foundational capability of the labor force in the future. The World Economic Forum predicts that creativity will be one of the most in-demand skills by 2020.

Creativity is a capability that cannot be replicated by machines or algorithms: It is profoundly human. People who are professionally dependent on their creativity will be the first users of creativity gyms; however, for everyone to be engaged, we must all accept that creativity is a practicable and highly demanded skill in the market.

2/ Creativity is not synonymous with talent. Even people in the most technical roles, like programmers, use logic-based creativity to solve complex and open-ended problems. Creativity gyms are a call to action for everyone – not just professional creative workers.

In the future, creativity gyms could be just as common as fitness gyms, providing visitors with a continuous stream of new and innovative experiences. With wider adoption, creativity gyms could also offer cross-creativity experiences, where seasoned creative professionals, creative trainers, or improvisation agents come together to share and co-create new creative processes. A ballet dancer could collaborate with an improv jazz musician, or a programmer could share and engage with a contemporary artist. These cross-creativity experiences could take the form of coffee chats, design challenges, or just simply mutual creation, offering a rich source of inspiration from a wide variety of disciplines, processes, and ideas.

The creative process is never truly over – creativity gyms can provide the perfect environment for the constant and endless stream of new ideas, services, and experiences that lie at the core of innovation. //// Anita Lin is an Innovation Analyst at Idea Couture.

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From eSports to Digital Transformation

By Will Novosedlik

It used to be that too much video gaming and not enough studying would get you into trouble. Now it gets you into college.

One of those colleges is called the Tricked eSport Academy (TEA), located about two hours outside of Copenhagen.

The curriculum is focused on developing the next generation of Danish eSports stars, and it specializes in two games: League of Legends (LoL) and Counterstrike: Global Offensive (CS:GO).

photo: idris mootee

Play School Wait – a “college” for eSports? Really? Why would there be a post-secondary academy for video gaming? Partly because of the steep learning curve. Like learning to play a musical instrument, for many games, it takes thousands of hours of play to reach mastery. At Ahyeon Polytechnic School, a high school in South Korea, for instance, students practice at least 10 hours a day. Unlike the TEA, however, Ahyeon is not strictly focused on the development of gaming skills. It was founded as a place that took in kids who were having trouble in the mainstream education system. However, the school soon discovered that if you gave these students gaming time, they began to take their traditional studies more seriously.

The school has already churned out seven or eight professional-level players. TEA, on the other hand, churns out about 25 pro-level grads a year. They scout them young – starting in middle school, following them through high school, and finally recruiting them for TEA once they’re old enough.

Concomitant with the rise of competitive gaming is the emergence of a global institutional infrastructure, with both national and global organizations forming around this surge of interest. In Denmark’s case, there’s eSport Denmark, a member of the Danish Athletics Federation. In South Korea, the birthplace of eSports, there is the Korea eSports Association, and in the UK, the British Esports Association.

Then there are the global outfits – the International e-Sports Federation and the World eSports Association. ESPN officially began regular eSports coverage in 2017. In the same way they cover football and basketball, they now track important video game tournaments and teams, showing highlights of big plays and important games. Playing video games has definitely gone pro – and global.

Globalization Live The money associated with eSports still doesn’t compare to the amounts thrown around in more mature pro sports, like football, hockey, and baseball, but the online nature of video games means that players can utilize streaming channels like Twitch and YouTube to build their individual brands, nurture a following, and attract sponsorship and advertising revenue of their own. The top Korean eSports league player and biggest star in LoL, who goes by the name “Faker,” supposedly earns $2.5M USD a year, according to several industry news sites. And that doesn’t include his sponsorship deals.

Gaming fans may only dream of attaining such status, but that doesn’t stop them from spending 6-10 hours a day playing the games their heroes get paid for. It’s gotten to the point where video game addiction has become a very serious issue, especially in South Korea. According to Dr. Kim Hyun-soo of the National Center for Mental Health in Seoul, the leading addiction among young people is gaming – and 90% of those addicts are male teenagers.

The problem typically starts at age 11. Children lose interest in schoolwork, family, and friends, and they even stop eating and sleeping. There are stories of teenage addicts wearing diapers so that they don’t have to get up from the computer to go to the toilet. There have even been fatalities recorded – several people have actually died from too much play and not enough rest or food, and one young South Korean game addict killed his mother and then himself. In response to this growing problem, the South Korean government passed a law in 2011 forbidding children under 16 from playing computer games between midnight and 6 a.m.

Ironically, it was that same government that unleashed eSports on the world after the Asian financial crisis of 1997.

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At that time, the South Korean government’s massive investment in internet infrastructure made it the most connected nation on earth. This was followed by the appearance of 24-hour internet gaming cafes called PC bangs, many of them owned and operated by people who had lost their jobs during the crisis, and patronized by students and unemployed youth. Then came tournaments and TV coverage, which in turn unlocked further government funding for game development and competition.

The idea of government support is not isolated to South Korea. Denmark – which has over 500,000 gamers who play more than twice a week, according to Thomas Koed, head of eSport Denmark – enjoys a similar technological infrastructure, with 97% broadband penetration. The government is actively supporting the development of eSport clubs, leagues, and associations. For a growing number of countries, eSports are now officially recognized as part of the national cultural and commercial agenda. To watch the lightning speed with which this phenomenon has evolved and spread itself around the world is to witness globalization in real time.

The Borgmann Question The emergence and rapid growth of competitive video gaming provides a live opportunity to examine what Charles Ess, while studying philosopher Albert Borgmann, refers to as our “uncritical cultural enthusiasm” for technology and its devices.

In his 1999 book Holding On to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium, he speculated on the power of information technology to cut us off from reality.

According to Borgmann, technology is not capable of engaging humans with reality because it does not contain any tie to actual things. He claimed that, rather than provide access to reality, it replaces reality. But with what?

While one could argue that Borgmann built his arguments on the rather outmoded ontology of substance metaphysics – which views reality as mere bits of matter – his point about the virtual reality of cyberspace not being as “real” as the physical, tangible world of objects can’t be ignored.

On the other hand, looking through the lens of process metaphysics, which posits that reality consists not of objects but of physical, organic, social, and cognitive processes

// As with all technological change, we have rushed headlong into eSports before we had any idea of their effects on us. //

interacting dynamically, the emergence of competitive gaming makes total sense. Financial instability + realpolitik + large numbers of underemployed males + broadband = BOOYAH! The birth of a new global industry.

Nineteen years on from Borgmann’s text, his reactionary observation that technology is not simply a means, but also an environment and a way of life, has most definitely proved true. Competitive gaming is just an extreme example – there are many more. Just look at the people around you the next time you are on public transit.

You will be the only one not looking at a screen.

Borgmann’s fears were presaged by Martin Heidegger in his 1977 book The Question Concerning Technology, in which the latter observed that technology has engaged us in nothing less than the transformation of the entire world, ourselves included, into raw materials to be mobilized in technical processes.

Heidegger’s dystopian thesis may just be a highbrow version of the robot apocalypse narrative, but our cultural obsession with that vision is not entirely misplaced.

Think about how much memory and mental capacity you have surrendered to your devices. There is mounting evidence of how our obsession with digital technology is literally shrinking our brains. Internet and gaming addiction have been shown to produce shrinkage of tissue volume in parts of the brain where processing occurs. Affected functions include planning, prioritizing, organizing, and impulse control.

There is also evidence of reduced cortical thickness, less efficient information processing, reduced impulse inhibition, increased sensitivity to rewards, insensitivity to loss, and abnormal brain activity associated with poor task performance.

Of particular concern is damage to the insula, which affects our capacity to develop empathy and compassion for others and our ability to integrate physical signals with emotion.

These skills dictate the depth and quality of personal relationships.

As Professor and Baroness Susan Greenfield, Senior Research Fellow at Lincoln College, Oxford University, states in her book Mind Change: How Digital Technologies Are Leaving Their Mark on Our Brains: “If we’re going to be living in a world where face-to-face interaction is less practiced and is thereby uncomfortable, then the ‘push’ of such an aversion to messy real-life, three-dimensional communication, combined with the ‘pull’ of the appeal of a more collective identity of external reassurance and approval, may be transforming the very nature of personal relationships. The knee-jerk speed required for reaction and the reduced time for reflection might mean that those reactions and evaluations themselves are becoming increasingly superficial.”

This all sounds like the new reality that Borgmann and Heidegger foresaw in their respective observations on the effects of technology and its seductive devices. So, where does that leave us?

The Next Black Hole The questions posed by Borgmann and Heidegger seem ever more prescient now that we are in the midst of wholesale “digital transformation.” The rise of eSports provides us with a convenient proxy for how technological change exerts the pull of a black hole, whereby every bit of matter within its gravitational field is sucked into the virtual vortex and transformed by it – whether you are talking about teenage males in diapers, post-secondary gaming academies, or former sports stadia turned into giant display screens for LoL tournaments.

Is digital transformation the next black hole? And what does it mean, exactly? We are at the stage where it has a different meaning depending on who is defining it – or, more accurately, what they are selling.

Online business publisher i-SCOOP defines it as “the profound transformation of business and organizational activities, processes, competencies, and models to fully leverage the changes and opportunities of a mix of digital technologies and their accelerating impact across society in a strategic and prioritized way, with present and future shifts in mind.” That’s a big mouthful of a definition, clearly designed to capture readers from as many different quarters of commerce as possible. Publishing is, after all, a volume-driven business.

Digital and customer experience speaker and blogger Brian Solis has a slightly more human take on it. He defines it as “the realignment of, or new investment in technology, business models, and processes to create new value for customers and employees and more effectively compete in an ever-changing digital economy.” Notice how this definition has a sense of purpose to it, and that the purpose is human-centered.

If you agree with Heidegger that technology is relentlessly overtaking us, you may cleave more hopefully to Solis’s definition, because it places technology into a context that considers this transformation to be in service of human needs. But look at what large organizations are expecting of digital transformation today, and the obsession seems very much more rooted in the technology itself and its promise of optimizing operational efficiency. Once again, what could be a platform for human-centered innovation becomes yet another way for companies to recover some of the control technology has ceded to their customers since the emergence of the internet.

As with all technological change, we have rushed headlong into eSports before we had any idea of their effects on us.

Who knew internet gaming would become a medically recognized form of addiction? Who knew climate change would be the result of fossil fuel technology? Who knew that social media would monetize your personal privacy?

Who knew that the presence of an Amazon distribution center in your town would eviscerate the tax base and turn workers into automata racing against the dictates of operational efficiency to earn a minimum wage?

In the case of eSports, what started out as “play” has rapidly evolved into something far more serious – a global business in the making, with a burgeoning infrastructure and a whole new layer of players. Likewise, there’s not much room for play in the breathless race to full-on digital transformation. As with all such things, once the money sees the opportunity to leverage an obsession, the gold rush begins – and playtime is over. //// Will Novosedlik is the former Head of Growth Partnerships at Idea Couture. He is currently a strategist and storyteller at large.

Competitive Video Gaming by the Numbers The estimated yearly revenue for the global eSport economy in 2017 was $696M USD (Newzoo 2017 Global eSports Market Report) The estimated global viewership for eSports events in 2017 was 385 million people (Newzoo 2017 Global eSports Market Report) eSports will be included as a medal event in the 2022 Asian Games (Olympic Council of Asia)

The unique viewer count for the 2015 LoL World Championships Final was 36 million (LoLesports.com); comparatively, the final game of the 2015 NBA Finals had a peak of only 28.7 million viewers and an average audience of 23.5 million (nba.com) The prize pool for the 2014 Dota 2 Tournament was $10.9M USD (thenextdigit.com), bigger than that of the Masters Golf Tournament, which distributed prizes totaling $9M (Augusta National Golf Club)

More than 27 million viewers tuned into the final game of the 2014 LoL World Championships (ESPN) LoL alone is evolving 12 times as fast as American football did: It has 2700 pro players, 1260 tournaments, and has awarded a cumulative $19M USD in prize money since its inception (The Huffington Post)

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Branding at play

By Louis Marino

Banks called Atom, N26, Bunq, and Monzo. Insurers named Lemonade and Oscar. In their efforts to distinguish themselves from long-time industry stalwarts, new entrants into the fields of banking and insurance are choosing playful, whimsical names that make no reference to the space they’re trying to disrupt.

Previous nomenclature in these business spaces has revolved around place names (Bank of America, Zurich Insurance Group), acronyms (HSBC, AXA), founders’ names (JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo), unified groups (Allianz, UnitedHealth Group), and words conveying safety (Ping An, Prudential). The sensibility of name-making revolved around projecting trust, solidity, and a sense of we’ve-alwaysbeen-here/we’ll-always-be-here staying power.

Not so for the newcomers who seemingly intend to put a lighter, even ephemeral touch on their industry’s formerly heavy look and feel – if not to outright reject what’s come before. “Buy this insurance, and you’ll feel refreshed,” the brand voice seems to be saying. “Bank here, and be happy,” they tout – or, at the very least, “don’t dread the experience entirely.” In an era when entrepreneurs and business creators do Shark Tank-style pitches for investment money, the trend toward playfulness could possibly stem from the need to convey to venture capitalists the emotion that the brand is expected to unleash.

It’s not so much that customers no longer need a sense of security when they open an account or select coverage.

Rather, in an age when trust in financial services and insurance institutions has been shaken by global macroeconomic upheaval, and new peer-to-peer mechanisms of establishing trust (such as blockchain) have emerged, it’s time to refresh

the old tropes for assuring stability. The newcomers seem to have concluded that the younger generation of consumers doesn’t want to interact with a stodgy behemoth but with a nonthreatening, more lighthearted, less formal company – one that issues hot-pink debit cards (as Monzo does), or pledges to pepper its communications with emojis.

In a sense, this new breed of company has rewritten the rules around what inspires security and trust. These emotions are no longer rooted in concrete pillars and an imposing facade, but in friendlier customer-facing messaging, swifter business processes that lighten or even eliminate the burden of previously arduous tasks, and a shift in control to the customer through blatant transparency and even invitations to provide input into future offerings.

In other words, the way to gain customer loyalty isn’t to immerse consumers in a fathomless pit of complexity, but rather to promise them a quick and easy way in and out. And the way to draw customers in is no longer by positioning your brand as someone trustworthy saying “put yourself in our capable and all-knowing hands,” but instead as a friendly group of peers saying “come play with us!” Far from silly and juvenile, this type of invitation encompasses an inclusive, adventurous spirit; the company is offering a means of escaping through an alternative way of doing something that is usually considered mundane and tedious.

In the insurance sector, Lemonade’s founders intentionally chose a name associated with words like “instant, fun, and social good” vs. “paperwork, hassle, and fighting.” In an industry famously bogged down by bureaucracy, endless form-filling, and slow results, customers are assured of speed, “zero paperwork”, and “instant everything.” On Lemonade’s website, a fast-moving video illustrates the swift and seamless interaction between customer and app. It ends with a congratulatory image of a glass of lemonade and a dashboard showing how long it took for the transaction to be completed (mere seconds). Lemonade also promises to donate all underwriting profits to a charity of the customer’s choosing once a year (an event they call “Giveback”), and the company publishes data about their customer growth and other internal metrics on their blog.

In a similar vein is Oscar, a health insurance startup co-founded by Joshua Kushner, the brother of President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and named after his great-grandfather. Oscar’s aim is to be customer centric and to humanize and simplify the insurance process by making it easier to navigate. On its whimsically illustrated website (the URL is hioscar.com, not just oscar.com), customers are promised a dedicated “concierge team” – rather than a random customer service agent – who can help them with healthcare- and insurance-related tasks, including finding a doctor, connecting with a medical specialist, and helping with paperwork. And instead of just collecting information about customers, the company exposes that data right back to their audience through its mobile app, through which customers can track doctor visits and lab work, view prescriptions, and monitor their deductible. The app also includes a step-tracker, which rewards customers with $1 for every day they hit their step goal.

photo: idris mootee

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In the equally dry banking space, there’s Berlin’s N26, which explicitly states on its website that banking should be “fun.” This isn’t surprising, given the fact that the company’s name reflects the number of smaller cubes in a Rubik’s Cube. Using video chat, customers can set up a free basic account in eight minutes. They can then control many aspects of their account directly through the N26 app, such as setting and changing daily payment and withdrawal limits, changing their PIN, and disabling payments. The company even accounts for the all-too-human tendency of losing a bank card only to find it again after you’ve gone through the trouble of canceling it by providing a tool for customers to block and unblock their bank card themselves.

Another game changer in the banking sector is UK-based Atom Bank. App developers at Atom are hired not from the banking industry, but from the gaming sector, as the company strives to emulate a video game with its app. Customers log in using face and voice recognition, and they are treated to 3D animations while using the app. In an extreme case of customer personalization, the company even lets customers name “their bank” and select the colors they’ll use in the logo.

Perhaps no company takes the invitation to play as far as Bunq, however, an Amsterdam-based mobile-only bank whose tagline is “bank of the free.” Customers – or “bunquers” – can open temporary group accounts to more easily share expenses (not unlike a group chat). But to really make customers feel like they own the banking experience, Bunq offers them access to application programming interfaces (API) and software development toolkits (SDK) to build their own website to manage monthly budgets, as well as apps to categorize spending and automated tools to calculate tax returns.

// It’s time to refresh the old tropes for assuring stability. //

Of course, underneath these friendly veneers is a hefty amount of advanced technology. In fact, the more simple and unique the interface, the more complicated the technology in the background seems to be. For every Lemonade, Oscar, N26, Bunq, and Monzo – not to mention every Rocket, Square, Acorn, and Venmo – there’s a tangled web of advanced data analytics at work, not to mention AI-driven chatbots; machine-learning algorithms; face, voice, and fingerprint recognition; and a good dose of behavioral economics.

In the end, then, these weirdly named newcomers are trying to pull off a bigger trick, even, than their predecessors: getting customers to believe they’re engaging in a nonthreatening, straightforward, almost fun activity that breaks with industry norms but is actually, in some ways, more complex than ever – as it’s driven by technologies that most consumers do not understand.

Time will tell which of these new entrants will have staying power in their chosen industries, but what’s clear is that the game has changed, and newcomers to the banking and insurance industries are offering a new way for customers to play. //// Louis Marino is Head of Design at Cognizant Interactive and also serves as Global Head of Design at Idea Couture.

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from entertainment to experience

What “Nerd” Culture Tells Us About Turning Customers Into Fans

No longer shrouded by the stigma of nerdiness, today’s comic conventions are more than just a place where adults gather to play dress-up or meet their real-life superheroes – they’re where the future of entertainment unfolds. Drawing hundreds of thousands of self-proclaimed nerds, as well as the companies who court them as customers, comic conventions like San Diego’s Comic-Con International and the New York Comic Con have grown from grassroots gatherings to high-profile media and techsaturated spectacles.

Arts and entertainment companies have long looked to comic conventions as important sites for understanding what makes comic, superhero, sci-fi, and fantasy fans tick – and other industries would do well to take cues from these centers of nerd culture. Comic conventions abound with hints about shifting human needs and desires that have important implications for both business and technology.

As sites where fringe, niche, and mainstream cultures collide, comic conventions offer unique opportunities for examining how millions of people seek out and create new ways to engage in and play with the content and experiences that they find both exciting and meaningful.

photo: Joey Nicotra

B y K at ie H il l

Identity Play

Online Influencing

From James Dean to Drake, creating an aura of coolness has long depended on not trying too hard or caring too much. Acquiring the reputation of a “geek,” “nerd,” or “fanboy/girl,” on the other hand, requires a person to display an undeniable zeal for and knowledge of a particular interest or hobby. Those who spend considerable time amassing knowledge of a fictitious world – for example, by attending events revolving around it or even dressing up as characters from it – feel that they have earned the right to call themselves fans or nerds; they take pride in this identity. In part, this is because having an intimate understanding of something is one way that we, as humans, form our sense of self. Putting that understanding into practice – that is, by performing it in public – is how we signify and solidify our chosen identities in the minds of others.

According to performance researcher Jennifer Gunnels, dressing up as a character is not mere escapism; rather, it is about adopting an identity that may not be feasible in daily life. For comic convention attendees, Gunnels asserts, dawning a cape, mask, or costume allows them to temporarily embody their desired identity among peers who eagerly accept them as extraordinary.

As society becomes increasingly accepting of the fluidity of identities, however, it is no longer unusual to come across people who publicly play with their identities, defying gender, class, and other categorizations through their dress. In fact, Gen Z, the cohort of people born between the mid-1990s and the mid-2000s, has been described as rejecting the millennial practice – largely born of social media – of curating their lives and presenting only their best selves to the world.

Comic conventions deserve some of the credit for making identity play through dress more mainstream. For previous generations, there was strong social and economic pressure to look a certain way – having a visible tattoo was often cause enough for an employee to be passed over for a promotion, for example. For this reason, people used occasions like comic conventions to embody their desired identities, even if only for a few days. For their part, comic conventions encouraged attending fans to celebrate the transgression of aesthetic and behavioral norms.

Comic books, after all, are known for featuring complex characters with storied backgrounds; it makes sense for comic conventions to encourage the celebration of secret identities and multiple selves. Today, comic conventions continue to cater to costume play (or “cosplay”) enthusiasts’ desire to not only dress up, but also to show off, by including parades, contests, and sets for staging photos to share on social media.

Since the early days of the internet, comic convention attendees have taken advantage of successive online platforms – from blogs to Vine to vlogs – as mechanisms for flexing their fan identities and nerdy authority. In Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture, author Rob Salkowitz notes that hashtags are one of the most accurate ways to predict box office success. Salkowitz observes that this is because the people who first tweet or post about the movies they’re excited to see are also those who tend to have influence over the media consumption of more casual audience members. Having reached the same conclusion, media and entertainment companies use comic conventions as opportunities to generate hype about upcoming releases among their most influential potential customers. The challenge that these companies continue to

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Tangible Transformation So, what can businesses learn from comic conventions about appealing to customers in an age when heightened acceptance of identity fluidity belies the value of traditional segmentation and personification? What do these conventions tell us about attracting the attention of eminent customers who have their own fans and followers to consider?

To start, the success of comic conventions indicates the necessity of keeping pace with people’s changing needs and wants in order to stay relevant with an increasingly dynamic population and attention-driven economy.

Appreciating how customers are changing requires a willingness to explore new sites and scenes in order to uncover how and where people express the different sides of themselves.

An anthropological approach – one in which customers’ needs and desires are viewed in the context of the places they live, work, and play – is one way to uncover this understanding.

By talking to customers at places like comic conventions, eSports competitions, YouTuber conventions, tailgate parties, and other industryrelevant venues, we can learn just what it takes to transform an ordinary customer into a lifelong fan in a world where play is a platform for self-expression and self-discovery. //// Katie Hill is an Ethnographer at Idea Couture.

CHÂTEAU CHEVAL BLANC • CHÂTEAU BEAUREGARD • CHÂTEAU GRUAUD LAROSE • CHÂTEAU BEYCHEVELLE • DOMAINE VERNAY • CHÂTEAU BRANAIREDUCRU • CHÂTEAU DASSAULT • CHÂTEAU CLOS DE BOÜARD • CHÂTEAU D’ISSAN • DOMAINE DE CHEVALIER • DOMAINE FAIVELEY • CHÂTEAU GRAND CORBIN DESPAGNE • CHÂTEAU JEAN FAURE • CHÂTEAU KIRWAN DOMAINE ROSTAING • CHÂTEAU MALESCOT ST-EXUPÉRY • CHÂTEAU LAFON ROCHET • DOMAINE JASMIN • CHÂTEAU LAGRANGE • CHÂTEAU LÉOVILLE BARTON • CHÂTEAU LES CARMES HAUT-BRION • CHÂTEAU PAPE CLÉMENT CHÂTEAU PEDESCLAUX • CHÂTEAU PHÉLAN SÉGUR • CHÂTEAU PICHON BARON • CHÂTEAU PICQUE CAILLOU • CHÂTEAU POUJEAUX • CHÂTEAU DE LA TOUR • CHÂTEAU RIPEAU • CHÂTEAU SAINT-PIERRE • CHÂTEAU SIRAN CHÂTEAU SMITH HAUT LAFITTE • CHÂTEAU VALANDRAUD CHÂTEAU TRIANON • CHÂTEAU FEYTIT CLINET • CHÂTEAU GLORIA … photo: Lena Orwig

face, however, is this: How can they generate the most – and the longest lasting – excitement among comic convention attendees?

In today’s entertainment-saturated and fiercely competitive experience economy, companies of all stripes recognize the importance of attracting the right kind of attention to their offerings. That’s why so many organizations – not only media businesses and film studios, but also technology companies – are using events like comic conventions to win the support of their most influential customers: fans. For example, at Comic-Con International 2016 in San Diego, Samsung and Warner Bros.

Pictures partnered to offer fans an exclusive experience based on the highly anticipated Suicide Squad film. Fans got to “be” a member of the Squad in a scene from the film, a move that earned both the upcoming film and the Samsung VR extensive coverage on social and mainstream media. Despite its notable lack of critical accolades, Suicide Squad was a massive hit at the box office and beyond, continuing to earn fame and fortune well after its August 2016 release date, including from sales of what Business Insider reported as 2016’s most popular Halloween costume: Squad member Harley Quinn.

« Wine is a question of passion and a complicated matter.

U’Wine advises and accompanies your choices. » OIivier Bernard - Owner of Domaine de Chevalier and Head of Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux

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Establishing Equilibrium Through Creative Play

By Lena Blackstock

We are well aware of the benefits of creative play for child development, and we’ve seen examples throughout history of how play is a part of the creative process in a variety of disciplines. But what if creative play could be more than that? What if creative play acted as a link for our evolving understanding of work-life balance? What if it allowed us to look at work-life balance as a fluid concept, rather than requiring a strict division? Further, what if creative play, especially when shared among pairs or groups, could actually offer a feedback loop from one area of life to the other, thereby strengthening both?

Perhaps the answer is deceptively simple: that play can be the pathway for a fluid, interconnected work-life format for couples, partners, and collaborative workplaces.

When play is part of a creative process, it can become the link between joyful work and a purposeful life.

illustration: Jennifer Backman

Play Connecting Science / Art Sir Alexander Fleming is most famous for discovering penicillin, for which he was awarded the shared Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1945. One lesser known detail about him, however, is that his appreciation for creative play led to his breakthrough discovery.

Fleming played all kinds of games, from golf to billiards, and was active in multiple art societies – but he also played at work; he played with microbes by using them to paint ballerinas, houses, mothers feeding children, stick figures fighting, and other scenes. “There are, of course, many rules to this play…” he said, “but when you have acquired knowledge and experience it is very pleasant to break the rules and to be able to find something nobody had thought of.” It was through this creative play that he discovered penicillin – all thanks to mold that had developed on a staphylococcus culture plate that had been accidentally contaminated.

Immunology is not the only branch of science to benefit from this type of creative play. Richard Feynman was a theoretical physicist who is best known for making science more accessible to the average person. He won a Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in quantum electrodynamics, which was initially inspired by watching someone spin plates in a cafeteria. In a BBC documentary called The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, Feynman describes the purpose and joy of play in his work. When he first delved into physics, it was through play and curiosity. However, as he progressed in his career, he felt that he lost the playfulness of his explorations. He is known to have said, ”Physics disgusts me a little bit now, but I used to enjoy doing physics.

Why did I enjoy it? I used to play with it. I used to do whatever I felt like doing – it didn’t have to do with whether it was important for the development of nuclear physics, but whether it was interesting and amusing for me to play with.”

With his remembered appreciation of creative play, the experience of watching the spinning plates in the cafeteria led Feynman to play with physics once again, and it allowed him to have open-ended observations. Speaking of this time in his career, he explained: “It was effortless.

It was easy to play with these things. It was like uncorking a bottle: Everything flowed out effortlessly. I almost tried to resist it! There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was. The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.”

In the same way scientists have toyed with art, artists have tinkered with science. In his book, also called The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, Feynman takes issue with the misconception that only an artist would truly appreciate the beauty of a flower, while a scientist would merely dissect and categorize it. In reality, a playful mind will enjoy the vibrant colors of the flower while following with a trail of questions about the purpose the colors might play. The scientific knowledge adds to the mystery and the awe of the beauty.

Charles Eames, one of the most prolific designers of the 20th century, references Feynman’s thinking in one of his famous Norton Lectures: “I can never think that our pleasures, our rewards from the things around us, could ever possibly be diminished by additional knowledge about it. And the contrary is true.

I heard Richard Feynman describe waves on the beach.

He’s a particle physicist and he was describing the waves in terms of insights that he felt and knew about the reactions of the particles within the wave, the relationship between the molecules of water, what happened as the light came into it, the forces of gravity and the inertia [that] was taking place – and it was a description of a breaking wave because he had a tremendous appreciation of the exquisite beauty of what was going on, not only on the surface of the wave, but what was going on inside the surface of the wave and what had gone beyond to make that wave possible. It was a delightful thing and no better pleasure or experience could I wish you all.”

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Play Connecting Work / Life

A New Equilibrium

Employees traditionally sought to divide work and life as clearly as possible, but in recent years this mindset has shifted. The past few generations understood that you work for one company, for long hours, and climb the corporate ladder internally. For them, there was a clear expectation that once you were home, you were “off the clock.” Today, the idea of being “off the clock” is outdated.

A connected, fluid concept of work-life balance through play, however, could put a more positive spin on the merging of our personal and work lives. As many creative couples know, creativity doesn’t have office hours. I often find myself in moments when I am technically “off the clock,” and yet an unrelated and playful conversation with my husband leads to a breakthrough for a wicked problem at work. This is where creative, open-ended play shines – it’s not the moments “on the clock” or “off the clock,” it’s the moments that connect the two.

Charles Eames himself was one half of a creative couple that lived and worked harmoniously through play. Charles and Ray Eames exemplified a connected – rather than divided – approach to work and life. They each contributed their different perspectives and different skills. Their playfulness brought them success; it allowed them to foster a constant cycle of feedback and to problem solve in a variety of ways. According to William Cook, author of a BBC article on the couple entitled “Charles and Ray Eames: The Couple Who Shaped the Way We Live,” Ray’s contributions to their success were “a lot subtler, less overtly visible to the untrained eye. She had a sharp eye for detail, he had a head full of big ideas. She sprinkled stardust on his designs, and gave his grand projects the human touch. She had a feel for color, and a sense of fun. Without her playful input, his creations would have seemed austere.”

Tim Brown, CEO at IDEO, believes in the importance of play. At the 2008 Serious Play conference, Brown spoke about our tendency as adults to categorize any new observation or situation as quickly as we can. This is because we want to settle on an answer and figure out what is going on. He references aluminum foil as an example. As adults, we immediately associate it with its assigned category: aluminum foil is something we use in the kitchen. But a child would look at the foil and think of ways to use it to make a costume or create something new.

Kids are more engaged with different possibilities. They don’t just ask “What is it?” but rather, “What could I do with it? What could it be?” This openness is the beginning of explorative play. More importantly, avoiding the pitfalls of categorization through play helps us see value in having a connected approach to our lives. Creative play can offer different perspectives and encourage more cross-pollination, leading to adults asking more questions like “What could it be?”

There are clear advantages when art feeds science and science informs art. Similarly, in creative pairs, one person’s way of thinking and doing feeds into the other’s. A playful perspective helps us to categorize less, thereby finding unique and truly new solutions to challenges. Creative play-acting is a connective tissue, a mechanism through which we can approach the known in new ways, without our predisposition to a categorized or solely goal-oriented life.

It’s evident that creative play connects us to different ways of investigating and understanding the world. If the giants of art and science can utilize it in such a beneficial way, perhaps we can shift our gaze forward and consider how creative play might be a new lens through which we can refine what work-life balance may look like in the 21st century. ////

“Who would’ve predicted 5 years ago that Silicon Valley would take over Hollywood?”

Lena Blackstock is a Senior Design Strategist and Design Researcher at Idea Couture.

— Anne Thompson, Editor at Large, IndieWire

illustration: Jennifer Backman

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passionate drivers testing their speed on dedicated circuits or in the countryside on the weekends?

Not so fast.

It’s up to the industry itself to reinvent what driving means. There is talk, for example, of Apple buying Tesla and reinventing mobility in the next 12 months. It could be a good fit: Apple and Tesla have much in common. Both emphasize mass production of highly profitable and in-demand products – think of Tesla’s Model 3 and Apple’s iPhone. Tesla and Apple each have strong brand purposes. Finally, both companies exist to create a dent in the universe, with one company literally launching a rocket earlier this year.

No one knows exactly what the future holds. But one thing is certain: Without Porsches, Ferraris, and Lamborghinis, life would become much more boring. Still, I was wondering how the leading German carmakers (or makers of emotive machines) think about the future with all of these disruptions happening.

So, I decided to ask Dr. Oliver Blume, Porsche’s CEO and Chairman of the Executive Board, a few strategyrelated questions on the future of Porsche. Here are his thoughts:

Porsche Versus the Machine A conversation with Porsche CEO Oliver Blume about the future of the performance sports car.

You can take away my credit card and smartphone.

But please don’t take away my steering wheel.

They say that with the coming of faster electric cars, traditional sports cars are going the way of home phones – they are becoming dated and obsolete. Fine performance sports cars will end up like horse-drawn carriages; we simply won’t be seeing them on the streets anymore. They will be replaced by soulless, self-driving machines (I refuse to use the word “car,” as that implies the presence of a driver), or even by giant drones that lift people from one building to another.

There will be no more life behind the wheels. I spend an average of two to three hours a day in one of my Porsches while getting to work or a meeting. It gives me so much joy and control, and I wouldn’t want that to be taken away. For Porsche, Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini, and Aston Martin, are electrification and digitization bringing on a doomsday scenario? Consider this: In a 2017 interview for The Huffington Post, Don Butler, Executive Director of Connected Cars and Services at Ford, predicted that while software has traditionally accounted for 10% of a vehicle’s value, that number will soon grow to 50%.

In response to changing demands,

sports car superbrands have been busy introducing new supercars, including the Porsche Mission-E and the Ferrari Sergio. The FXX K, Ferrari’s most powerful car yet, features an electric motor that can boost the 860 horsepower of the car’s V12 engine to 1,050 horses.

Lamborghini’s Terzo Millennio, developed in collaboration with MIT, is a futuristic concept car that focuses on energy storage, materials, propulsion, design, and emotion.

Rather than including a battery, the car’s carbon fiber body stores energy, effectively turning the whole car into its own battery. The Germans and Italians will try just about anything to ensure that there is enough innovation happening to keep drivers behind the wheels of their emotive machines.

But change is inevitable, and the autonomous car is the future. Real sports cars will survive for the same reasons that mechanical watches do: novelty and nostalgia. People are still wearing mechanical watches, including many millennials who have no practical reason for needing them, just as they don’t need, say, vinyl record players. But the luxury car market is still smaller than it once was. Will the sports car market be reduced to a tiny segment of

Idris Mootee: People are saying that the car is the new smartphone, but perhaps that is an oversimplification. How does Porsche view the digital transformation of the luxury sports industry?

photo: idris mootee

By Idris Mootee

Oliver Blume: We see this as a great opportunity for us. Porsche is already in the midst of this transformation.

We are driving it actively, systematically, and purposefully forward – but [we are not looking to] turn our sports cars into smartphones.

Porsche will always focus on the fascinating sporty driving experience.

But around this experience, we are developing a variety of digital offerings that provide our customers with real added value. For example, we have a “Mark Webber app,” which steers the driver autonomously along the ideal line over the racetrack for training purposes.

IM: Just when Nokia thought there was nothing to improve for the phone,

smartphones changed the game.

What is the potential game changer in this industry, other than electrification?

OB: The turning point is already here.

Digitization, connectivity, and electrification – these are the three major challenges that our industry has to face today in order to be successful tomorrow. The demands of customers and society on mobility are changing at a rapid pace.

Companies that are not sufficiently flexible and do not adjust to future trends in good time will not be able to hold their own in the market in the long term.

IM: What is Porsche’s response to a Google Porsche or Apple Porsche?

OB: We observe the activities of potential new competitors from the IT industry with great interest and respect. And there are points where we can learn from them. But they are not the yardstick for our entrepreneurial thinking and actions. They may build advanced cars, but [they will not build] a Porsche. We are the only ones who can do that. Seventy years of experience in sports car construction, 30,000 motorsport victories, technology transfer from the racetrack to the road, and intelligent performance – all of this cannot be

copied. Porsche is unmistakable and unique. That is why we are confidently following our own path into the future.

And we are successful with this.

IM: What will turn Porsche into a different company? Do you think a reinvention is needed in the near future, given that the state of the industry is changing so quickly?

OB: Porsche is already changing with great strides. But this is not about changing our character. Our identity, our brand, our values, and our culture – those are not at stake. We do not have to become another company in order to remain sustainable, but rather, [we need to] exploit our potential.

We [will] transfer our tradition into the future and combine it with innovative technologies and ideas. In this way, we [will] create completely new products, services, and business models that fit our brand and actively shape our future. And one thing will always hold true: Porsche remains Porsche – yesterday, today, and tomorrow. //// Idris Mootee is Global CEO at Idea Couture.

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Play to Transform Will Playing Make AI More Human?

Hence, through self-play, AlphaGo Zero was able to develop a foundational understanding of the game of Go from the ground up.

It would, for instance, intentionally complicate situations it was curious about in order to close out gaps in its knowledge. Supervised learning and external datasets in previous generations of AlphaGo did not have this capability, which was critical to AlphaGo Zero’s development and mastery of the game.

We are fast entering a new era with AGI – and play-led learning is driving it. Play-led learning will be integral to the development of this technology, as play fosters AGI that is intrinsically motivated, adaptive, and can take on more creative challenges. The timeline of AI development comprises six major phases: 1/ The Symbolic Age Rule-based programming.

By Fa r z a d fa zel i a n i

On March 15, 2016, Google’s AI program, AlphaGo, beat world champion Lee Sedol four-to-one in one of the most complex strategy games ever devised – the ancient Chinese game of Go. Since that historic match, Google has released a new version of its AI agent, called AlphaGo Zero, which defeated its predecessor by 100 games to 0. Unlike AlphaGo, which relied on big data, machine learning, and advanced algorithms, AlphaGo Zero started learning Go on its own, from scratch. Starting with a very primitive understanding of the game, AlphaGo Zero created a duplicate of itself, playing itself repeatedly and using what it learned in each match to advance and update its algorithms.

Beginning with random play, it took AlphaGo Zero only 40 days to master the game and become the world’s best player.

AlphaGo Zero is a perfect example of artificial generalized intelligence (AGI): an intelligent machine that can successfully perform any intellectual task that a human being can. It reflects a new type of AI that can learn, adapt, and think creatively in order to solve

complex challenges that previous generations of AI struggled with. In other words, it knows how to play.

Technologists have already built machines that are faster, stronger, and more precise than humans.

Millions of such machines are working across industries today. Where these machines stumble, however, is in adaptation. Faced with new and unforeseen circumstances, these machines find it difficult to adapt, adjust, or improvise. As such, AI researchers have been looking to biology for clues on adaptation, and they have struck something powerful with play.

Although play is not the most efficient, predictable, or streamlined form of learning, all living creatures play. Play is fun and serves as a natural user interface for learning.

Play-led learning also provides a distinct advantage; it develops combinatorial flexibility. That is, those who learn through play cultivate the ability to take apart sets of inputs and relationships, and to reconstruct them in new and interesting ways. This second-order and generalized property of learning is what distinguishes AGI that learn through play from other forms of AI.

2/ Data Mining and Analytics Finding patterns and predictions in well-defined data.

3/ Cognitive Computing Understanding unstructured data, such as voice, text, video, and images.

4/ Curious and Creative Machines Combining the above so that AI will not only reach logical conclusions, but will also formulate new questions and experiments to generate understanding.

5/ Self-Aware AGI Developing AI that understands itself and is aware of its interactions in the world, allowing it to explore new ways of being and doing.

6/ Next Generation AGI Embracing AGI that is fully integrated and advanced enough to create the next generation of AI beyond itself.

AGI research is making significant strides in pushing us forward on this horizon. Consider the following three studies.

Taking their inspiration from how children play, discover, and learn new skills on the playground, researchers at the University of California,

Berkeley have developed AI agents that are driven only by curiosity to learn effective behaviors in two separate game environments: Super Mario Bros. and ViZDoom. In their application of curiosity, they discovered that play can lead to intrinsically motivated learning and survival skills, and that in the absence of the pursuit of explicit goals, play lends itself well to generalizable skills. They also discovered that AI which develops through play can learn even faster when supported by external guidance later in the process.

In another paper titled “ResourceBounded Machines Are Motivated to Be Effective, Efficient, and Curious” (2013), Steunebrink, Koutník, Thórisson, Nivel, and Schmidhuber use a Work, Play, and Dream framework to design AI that more effectively balance exploration and exploitation.

In this framework, Play – curiositydriven exploration and the seeking of novelty – drives an AI agent to explore gaps in its knowledge. Learnings from such activities serve to foster discovery and new sequences of useful actions, which can then be capitalized upon in order to use less resources (energy, time, or inputs) in solving current and future work problems. In understanding the importance of play in the overall development of AGI, the authors write, “We emphasize that Work, Play, and Dream should not be considered as different states, but as different processes which must be scheduled.”

Finally, studies led by professor Hod Lipson and the Creative Machines Lab at Columbia University are using play to push AI research beyond cognitive computing and creative machines and toward self-aware AI. In a series of experiments, Lipson’s team designed robots to use play principles to first learn about themselves, much like most living creatures do. Starting with no image of itself or its capabilities, these robots danced around in silly, random ways, and used the feedback they got from these activities to generate increasingly more accurate images of themselves. This enabled the robots to then learn how to build new capabilities, such as walking forward, without ever having been taught or programmed to do so. After the robot learned this new capability, however, Lipson’s team did something

surprising: They chopped off one of the legs that the robot used to walk.

Remarkably, within one day, the robot had reimagined itself and generated a new way to walk forward, optimizing the capabilities it had left – a feat that had not been accomplished before.

The team’s latest work in this area, “Reset-free Trial-and-Error Learning for Robot Damage Recovery,” by Chatzilygeroudis, Vassiliades, and Mouret, was published in the February 2018 issue of Robotics and Autonomous Systems.

These examples highlight how play is enabling researchers to develop the next generation of AGI. As mentioned, play in itself is not the most efficient or predictable form of learning. But play-led learning enables a deeper understanding that fosters AGI agents to be more curious, creative, and self-aware.

For now, the ability to think creatively and strategically may be hailed as the last refuge of human career life – see Joseph Pistrui’s January 2018 Harvard Business Review article, “The Future of Human Work Is Imagination, Creativity, and Strategy.” But looking ahead, it is conceivable that AGI will have the ability to do everything that humans currently do in their day-to-day work, whether blue-collar, professional, or creative. And if AGI will soon be on the same playing field as us, the consequent question we may want to consider is this: How might such technology enable us to reinvent the future of work? //// Farzad Fazeliani is an economist specializing in strategic foresight and innovation.

What kind of employee does your organization develop?

Utility Maximizer

Utility Maximizer

Collaborator

Collaborator

Organizational Culture

Extrinsically Motivated

Organizational Culture

Intrinsically Motivated

Motivation

Disengagement

Work

Play vs. Play Work Shifting Work From Work-Life Balance Organizational Organizational Play to Work-Life Integration Culture StagnationCulture

Extrinsically Zero Sum GameMotivated Infinite Game

Intrinsically FunctionaryMotivated

Human-Centered

Motivation

Disengagement Work

Play

Play

Stagnation

Work Zero Sum Game

vs.

Work

Infinite Game

Functionary

Growth

Play Growth Human-Centered

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values at play

By Tim Morgan

“It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.” The ancient Romans (and more than a few head-shaking parents) have offered that sentiment as a warning about the dangers of play. It is obvious that different kinds of play come with different principles, such as “always play fair,” “put your heart into it,” or “it isn’t cheating if no one is looking.” Some games, like Chess or Go, are bound by strict rules and structure. Roleplaying games and other types of “pretend” play are imaginative and creative, while whimsy is the point of some games, like the raucous “Calvinball” from Bill Watterson’s classic Calvin and Hobbes comic strips. How can such simple concepts like play and fun encompass such a vast array of different types and styles? The answer lies in values systems.

Psychologist Clare W. Graves spent decades focusing on an emergent theory of adult biopsychosocial values development. He found that as an individual’s life conditions change, they develop new value sets to solve persistent existential problems. As each set of values resolves its corresponding problems, it inevitably also creates new problems. This, in turn, prompts the emergence of new values, which then create new problems, thereby prompting the development of new values; this cycles continues ad infinitum up the values

spiral. Don Beck and Christopher Cowan spent another 20 years refining Dr. Grave’s values theory, which they called “spiral dynamics.”

One way of conceptualizing how new spiral value sets emerge is to liken this development to the evolution of a new species as a natural habitat changes over time – in other words, each new set always emerges from prior sets.

Further, each value set shapes an individual’s perspectives and thinking. It determines what is considered fun and what feels like play.

The following table describes each of the spiral dynamics value containers, known as vMemes. It also lists examples of types of play that resonate with each value system. Most people have a mix of values from all vMemes, meaning that individuals enjoy different types of play based on how they resonate with their mix of value sets.

It is easy to see how play types reflect matching values. As babies, we all begin with biologically-driven Beige SurvivalSense values.

We learn via sensory games like peek-a-boo and keep-away. Even in adulthood, we seek to soothe our senses via fidget toys or repetitive play, and most adults laugh after a harmless scare. For Beige, play is about survival.

Purple KinSpirit values are the next step up the spiral. Here, our sense of play centers on others. We want to share our fun, but we still fear a mysterious world. Our play allows us to

build a protective closeness to others. Together, we playfully engage with the unknown forces that animate the world. We “spin the bottle” to embarrass (sacrifice) each other to the fates, consult spiritual forces via Ouija or tarot, and chant to ward off bad luck for our favorite team during a championship game. For Purple, play pulls everyone together.

Red PowerGods break free of the restrictions of the tribe. For Red, it is all about looking out for number one. Playing tricks on others is hilarious fun, and so is taking control with games like King of the Mountain. Through gambling, Red can defeat the hidden spirits feared by Purple. For Red, power is play.

Blue TruthForce is not amused by Red’s antics. For Blue, play is about asserting order and discipline over chaotic impulses; play is therefore centered on truth and order. Blue creates strongly structured games like Chess and Go, and they favor the group over the individual via team sports. They want to reveal the truth by solving mysteries or puzzles. For Blue, play is orderly.

Orange StriveDrive derives a sense of fun from working around Blue’s rigid restrictions.

Their play is all about achievement. They like competitive real-world games with complex rules (that can be bent) and opportunities to excel over others. They will outpace you in a triathlon in the morning and annihilate all of your armies in a game of Risk that evening. For Orange, play is about winning.

Green HumanBond thinks everyone should be having fun. This level is all about the “three C’s:” connections, coordination, and community.

They want everyone to build stories together, swarm the enemy tower as a team, or sing karaoke as a group. Green’s fun has one rule:

“No one wins unless everyone wins.” For Green, play is about community.

Yellow FlexFlow understands all the different types of play. They want to put it all together so that every color of the spiral gets to have fun. Yellow looks deeply into the mechanics of play, trying to understand what is fun for everyone. Their play is all about playing with how things work, be it The Sims or open-ended “sandbox” games. For Yellow, play is about creativity.

Turquoise GlobalView knows that life and play are one and the same. Their play is about exploration, discovery, and connection to the wonders of the living world. Turquoise’s play is deeply aesthetic; play is art, as art is life.

Turquoise understands that the other colors of the spiral are still maturing, so they find ways to smoothly align different kinds of play to create a unified sense of wonder. For Turquoise, play is universal; it is about encompassing the many aspects of life.

Ultimately, play is an expression of our values, regardless of how they manifest. Understanding how each value system sees play can help us understand how to teach, engage, achieve, connect, preserve, build, or even survive.

We can structure work around values in ways that make it fun; we can find new playful ways of creating ideas or crafting systems; we can even play with the spiral of values itself, creating new levels of understanding and cooperation between people living in all life conditions.

If we play hard enough, the world will be a better place for all. //// Tim Morgan is a graduate student in the University of Houston’s Foresight program.

// Understanding how each value system sees play can help us understand how to teach, engage, achieve, connect, preserve, build, or even survive. //

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Spiral Dynamics vMeme & Existential State

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Value Focus and Drive

Theme

Play Examples

First Tier: Believes it is the pinnacle of values.

Seeks to supersede other earlier values. / Beige SurvivalSense / Instinctive / Emerged over 100,000 years ago

/ Focus on self / To survive

Do what you must to stay alive

/ Peek-a-boo / Keep-away / Survival games, like One Night at Freddy’s / Fidget spinners / Repetitive games

/ Purple KinSpirits / Animistic, Clannish / Emerged over 40,000 years ago

/ Focus on others / To ensure clan survives and continues

Keep the spirits happy and the “tribe’s” nest warm and safe

/ Ouija board / “Spin the Bottle” / Sports chants / Tarot cards / Dice games / Ghost stories

/ Red PowerGods / Egocentric, Impulsive / Emerged about 10,000 years ago

/ Focus on self / To receive; controlling others or avoiding control by others

Be what you are and do what you want

/ Practical jokes / “King of the Hill” / Hooliganism and antics / Gambling

/ Blue TruthForce / Purposeful, Authoritarian / Emerged about 6,000 years ago

/ Focus on others / To promote absolute right over wrong

Life has meaning, direction, and purpose with predetermined outcomes

/ Rigid rules games (chess, Go, etc.) / Pattern games (Simon, Concentration) / Medieval tournaments / Puzzle games / Team sports / Mystery games

/ Orange StriveDrive / Strategic / Emerged about 700 years ago

/ Focus on self / To objectively achieve aspirations

Act in your own self-interest by playing the game to win

/ Development games (Monopoly, Machi Koro, Civilization, etc.) / Online PvP games / Individual sports / Strategic board games (Settlers of Catan, Risk, Diplomacy) / Card games

/ Green HumanBond / Relativistic / Emerged about 140 years ago

/ Focus on others / To explore inner self via connections with others

Seek peace within inner self, and explore the caring dimensions of community with others

/ Storytelling games (Once Upon a Time, Dixit, Cards Against Humanity) / Cooperative games (Pandemic, Gloomhaven, Artemis: Spaceship Bridge Simulator) / Team-building games / Roleplaying games / Massively multiplayer online games (MMOs) / Emotive toys (Cozmo, Furbies) / Karaoke

Second Tier: Understands it is the next step.

Sees other values as necessary parts of the whole.

The Freedom Chair Supporting the creation of world-changing ideas since 1998.

Created by legendary industrial designer and ergonomics pioneer, Niels Diffrient.

Diffrient believed that chairs should adjust to the user, not the other way around, resulting in the first-ever chair with a self-adjusting counterbalance mechanism.

humanscale.com/Freedom / Yellow FlexFlow / Systemic / Emerged about 80 years ago

/ Focus on self and understanding others / To understand and act to integrate new systems of living

Live fully and responsibly as what you are, and learn to become

/ Creativity games and toys (Story Cubes, Fabula, Magnetic Poetry kits) / Sandbox games and toys (LEGO, Minecraft, science kits) / Simulation games (Kerbal Space Program, The Sims, Tycoon series)

/ Turquoise GlobalView / Holistic / Emerged about 60 years ago

/ Focus on others and nature / To align all individuals and living systems into a cooperative whole

Experience the wholeness of existence through mind and spirit

/ Art games (Journey, Abzû, Flower, The Unfinished Swan) / Exploration games (No Man’s Sky, Firewatch, Horizon Zero Dawn, Child of Light) / Eco-balance games (Eco, New Shores) / Ethics games (Papers, Please; Oiligarchy)

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Current valuations of cryptocurrencies are largely speculative and driven predominantly by market perception, which itself is further fueled by media. Travin Keith, founder of Agavon, a blockchain DLT solutions consulting company, believes that although the rapid increase in market capitalization is mirroring that of the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s, the journey has been much more emotional and personal – which has, in turn, magnified its effects. “There’s a cult-like following for some of the cryptocurrency projects,” he says. “With the dot-com bubble, most of the investors were stock portfolio managers, active day traders, and high-net-worth individuals... ones who understood the risk and reward tradeoffs of their investments.” With cryptocurrencies, however, the majority of investors are not regular active participants within the financial markets. This means that the spikes can be higher – but the recovery can also be faster.

Given the limited knowledge that the general market and its investors have regarding DLTs and cryptocurrencies, volatile movements in the value of cryptocurrencies are also sometimes driven by further misconceptions within the market.

An example of this is the business adoption of blockchain technology. Travin notes that it is important to make the distinction between an organization adopting uses around blockchain and contributing to the public network versus containing their activities on a private network. Since many

from play to innovation Fueling the Evolution of Blockchain Technology

B y L i ly Z h a n g

The United States Air Force (USAF) was one of the first organizations to chart technological progress. In the early 1950s, the team looked at the development of aerospace technology to determine whether there was a pattern to the speed of innovation. Since aerospace was one of the fastest moving frontiers in technology at the time, and because designing and crafting a plane required decades of development, the USAF wanted to predict what the future of the aerospace industry would look like in order to make strategic competitive investments.

On a speed trend curve, the team plotted out the history of the fastest air vehicles. The Wright Brothers’ first flight in

1903 reached 4.2 mph; this speed jumped to 37 mph only two years later. The North American F-100 Super Sabre then broke the speed record four times in 1953, reaching a top speed of 755 mph. All of the data pointed to the inevitable space race that followed.

The speed of technological progress has set the pace for modern life and is shaping a Silicon Valley culture of “more, better, faster.” Since the development of aerospace technology, the speed of technological innovation has continued to accelerate. Today, distributed ledger technologies (DLTs), including blockchain, are the latest wave of technology taking the world by storm. This movement is challenging businesses and industries at large to re-examine their existing business processes and pushing them to reinvent themselves.

Given the infancy of blockchain, however, everyone is still making sense of what it is, what it can do, and what its future holds. As such, businesses and individuals alike are adopting a play mentality around this emerging technological innovation. In this context, to play is to embrace uncertainty, welcome experimentation, and fuel innovation within the ecosystem.

Incentivizing Play In the natural world, the purpose of play is often to form new relationships, to unleash imagination, or to generate new ideas. Within business contexts, however, play often requires a greater purpose. In particular, it is difficult for organizations to push technological innovations forward without an incentive.

photo: idris mootee

“Technology goes beyond mere tool making; it is a process of creating ever more powerful technology using the tools from the previous round of innovation.”

Ray Kurzweil

blockchain platforms are open source, the code behind them is publicly accessible and shared. When organizations are adopting and experimenting with blockchain, they often build their own private network from the open-source code but conduct activities exclusively on their private network. This means that many of the reported use cases are not affecting the public network at all – which falls in stark contrast to media depictions of blockchain’s rise in popularity and adoption. Consequently, these use cases are adding no effect to the demand for blockchain platforms or tokens, but are instead driving up the speculative value of these platforms.

However, speculative interest and financial bubbles are not always bad; bubbles help fuel technological innovation and adoption. Indeed, the increasing speculative value of cryptocurrencies is the driving force behind value creation within the ecosystem, as the blockchain protocol rewards its contributors directly for growing the network. Cryptocurrencies are a way of providing inherent incentives that push the development of blockchain forward and help bring in value for creators, not just investors. The protocol tokens appreciate in value as the network grows, and because the individuals contributing to the development of blockchain infrastructure are the ones holding the cryptocurrencies, they are inherently motivated to strengthen and further the technological protocol behind blockchain technology to

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drive up the value of their own investments.

In 1965, the cofounder of Intel, Gordon Moore, observed that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit – in other words, the technology affecting processing speeds – would double approximately every two years. In 1975, California Institute of Technology professor Carver Mead coined the term “Moore’s law” to describe the observation.

Fifty years later, in a retrospective interview with the Computer History Museum, Mead stated that “Moore’s law is not a law of physics. Moore’s law is a reflection on human nature, and there are two things important about it. People have to know down deep that something’s possible, that it’s physically possible to achieve, and they also have to believe deeply that it’s worth doing.” New technological innovations are often accompanied by volatile activities and values driven by speculation. However, speculative value is also a core building block behind the evolution of new technologies.

Playing Without Limitations With new budding technologies like DLTs, it is imperative for businesses and industries to cultivate an arena for experimentation and play without limitations. The growing attention and activities within the blockchain space have also warranted the attention of regulators around the world.

Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), a popular means by which funds are raised for a new cryptocurrency venture, are beginning to resemble the form of shares and securities of tomorrow’s financial markets. Legally, an ICO is still currently defined as a digital good rather than a financial asset.

However, according to an article in Fortune called “Canada Pours Cold Water on ‘Initial Coin Offerings’,” there is currently a push to regulate ICO activity given growing concerns around fraud, money laundering, cybersecurity risks, insufficient disclosure, and general violations of securities laws. China and South Korea, for example, are some of the first countries to have outlawed ICOs, with many major countries now following suit.

Governing regulations around new technologies aren’t necessarily always a threat to innovation. Though compliance with regulatory requirements may stifle the potential and level of innovation, achieving just the right amount can also place the appropriate constraints on what is otherwise an open ground for future exploitation. “ICO regulation is rapidly becoming a more existent factor but is one that, if applied correctly, can really help this grow,” Travin states. “You can’t achieve such high market capitalization with the government ignoring it. But the good news is that this is also a signal of strength and growth for the wider public who are not in the cryptocurrency space.”

With growing interest in DLTs and more frequent trading of cryptocurrencies, it will be increasingly important for consumers to learn how to navigate the constraints of regulatory grounds. Similar to the pre-regulatory days of Airbnb and Uber during the rise of the sharing economy, peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms are now facing increasing restrictions as the market has matured and had an opportunity to respond. Currently, the majority of crypto-markets are still exploring in regulatory sandboxes, and influencers within the space are pushing for regulators and private investors to

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tread carefully around the budding ecosystem. What results from this will dictate the future of DLTs and their applications across industries.

Cooperative Play The internet enabled the centralization of data and defined how data is delivered. Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) were the building blocks behind the internet and were designed to be open, common resources. However, it was in the application layer where innovation occurred and where a plethora of applications boomed, as value and return on investment were higher here than at the protocol level.

Most of the advancements made in TCP/IP technologies were contributions made by research institutions and scientists. However, it is household names like Amazon and Google that have become synonymous with the word “internet.” These organizations used the underlying protocols of the internet and developed their own infrastructures and applications on top. Facebook, for example, is a data company that captured value early on by leveraging network effects to build a user base that contributed data within its own respective private applications layer and ecosystem.

Since they were able to capture value early on, they gained the resources needed to continue scaling and investing further into supporting protocols and infrastructure. In this type of winner-takes-all situation, market influence and value creation are concentrated in the hands of a number of large organizations. Very few others are able to gain the resources required to innovate at the infrastructure layer with such scale, nor do they have access to the wealth of data that these organizations have gathered.

Similarly, the blockchain technologies being built today are comparable to the early protocol layer of the internet, which allows for permission-less innovation through its open architecture. With DLTs, however, the ecosystem is reversed; much of the concentration of efforts lie within the protocol layer. In a blog post for Union Square Ventures titled “Fat Protocols,” Joel Monegro explains the rationale behind this flipped model: “By replicating and storing user data across an open and decentralized network rather than individual applications controlling access to disparate silos of information, we reduce the barriers to entry for new players and create a more vibrant and competitive ecosystem of products and services on top.”

Instead of large players developing self-contained applications and operating in silos, the open-source nature of blockchain protocols and shared data layer encourage cooperative development of the foundational layer behind the technology. This type of streamlined ecosystem reduces the cost of switching to alternative services while creating the ideal competitive conditions; in the long run, this should increase quality and drive down costs. By making it easy for anyone to contribute to this open permission-less ecosystem and encouraging collaborative play, DLTs are providing a much more powerful force of transformation than that which occurs when innovations are approached on an individual level – and this is translating to wide-scale adoption and renewed business models.

The Evolution of Play: From Exploration to Transformation The process of play often takes participants through an evolutionary journey. First, we experiment with exploratory abstract ideas; later, we transform them into novel innovations. Similarly, new technologies often evolve from a single use case to become a driving force behind new business models. Bitcoin was the first application of blockchain technology and arguably the one that amassed a heightened interest in DLTs and cryptocurrencies.

Now, new blockchains are being launched every month, and everyone is hoping to jump on the bandwagon.

The growing popularity of Bitcoin and its wide-scale adoption has successfully illustrated a single use case for blockchain technology. Since Bitcoin, the industry has seen a growing number of DLT applications, many using blockchain to innovate existing processes and businesses.

This is similar to the rise of the internet and the development of online iterations of existing businesses. Consider how Expedia largely replaced traditional brick-and-mortar travel agencies or how online journalism and entertainment sites like Medium or BuzzFeed became one preferred method of media consumption. This eventually led to the introduction of the sharing economy, with companies like Uber and Airbnb entirely reimagining the travel industry and existing business models.

Trust is distributed among different actors across a blockchain. In a public blockchain database, information is stored across its network and not controlled by any single entity. Since decentralization is the core of blockchain’s trustless system, the industries that are most at risk from disruption will also be the ones where the margins for the middleman are highest.

Blockchain’s decentralized systems also mean that exchanges can occur among participants without an intermediary.

The introduction of blockchain has paved the way for a new market dynamic: one based on true networks and decentralized business models. Within it, there would be no central authority, and contributions and ownership would be shared among all those involved. Instead of a centralized system of exchange – which has allowed companies like Airbnb and Uber to make a margin by connecting service providers to users – blockchain allows for a marketplace where interactions are automated and the power of the network is distributed to its users.

Bee Token is one example of a blockchain-based sharing startup aimed at revolutionizing the existing sharing economy.

A prospective competitor for companies like Airbnb and HomeAway, Bee Token plans to generate the majority of its revenue by licensing its technology to other organizations rather than charging an intermediary fee for every transaction that takes place between a host and guest. The other revenue component is to charge a minimum transaction fee for users who choose to pay for rooms using other cryptocurrencies rather than Bee Token’s own currency. By incentivizing users to purchase Bee Token’s currency, the company will further increase the value of that currency. The company recently raised $15M through its multi-stage ICO and is planning on entirely automating the business through sophisticated self-executing smart contracts.

// to Play is to embrace uncertainty, welcome experimentation, and fuel innovation within the ecosystem. //

Similarly, Ethereum and smart contracts are the beginning of new business models within the blockchain ecosystem, but industries will likely see more disruptive use cases with time. The most innovative use cases of DLTs will surface between the convergence of industries and technologies, eventually developing into new business models that leverage the unique capabilities of DLTs rather than overwriting existing technology through blockchain application.

Organizations should therefore continue to fuel innovation within the DLT ecosystem and strive to push through projects with strong potential but little direction.

Remembering Amara’s Law The value and full capabilities of new technological innovations are often uncovered through a period of play and experimentation. Only when there are economic incentives for individuals to contribute to and push forward new ideas, limiting governance and regulations are in place, and a cooperative environment is developed can new technologies evolve from a single use case to a true force of disruption across industries.

Amara’s law states that people tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate its effects in the long run. In time, much of the current speculation around cryptocurrencies will dissipate, and many of the existing blockchain platforms will fail. However, every failing alternative cryptocurrency will help push the technology further – creating faster transaction times, reducing the energy required per transaction, and improving its security. It is through this period of play that true value will be uncovered in DLTs and the application of blockchain; in other words, play is fundamental to the progression of new technologies. //// Lily Zhang is an Innovation Analyst at Idea Couture.

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Brain cells are lit, ideas start to hit Next the formation of words that fit At the table I sit, making it legit And when my pen hits the paper, ahh sh*t!

– Big Daddy Kane, “Ain’t No Half-Steppin’”

No Half Steppin’

B y N i c C o n n o l ly

Nobody’s equal.

photo: aiden marples

A case for playfulness and hip-hop in business

Commonly referred to as one of the most skilled and influential hip-hop MCs to have practiced the craft, Big Daddy Kane was the epitome of smooth and cool in the 80s. He effortlessly played with language and helped define a genre’s early days – from the rhythm to the stylistic algorithm that defined, with precision, an era’s vision.1 The lyrics above are from his 1988 hit “Ain’t No Half-Steppin” – the 25th greatest hip-hop song of all time according to Rolling Stone – and they break down his creative process in order to show just how easy it was for him to be the best, for him to be “Kane” (which stands for King Asiatic Nobody’s Equal). These lyrics are boastful, skillful, and most importantly, playful.

There’s a lot of playfulness in hip-hop, and Big Daddy Kane is just one of many who leverages play with ease to attract interest and grow his brand. If a 30-year-old example of strategic playfulness isn’t timely enough for you, please feel free to look at anything Drake does,2 or to the swarm of surreal Kafkaesque meme-rappers currently taking over the charts. Being playful can be, and has been for many, a great strategic move. It can make you look effortlessly cool and desirable to customers and shareholders alike.

Playfulness is also partly how, over the last 30 years, rappers have transformed themselves from fringe artists into cultural powerbrokers, fashion icons, and industry moguls.

However, being playful isn’t for everyone, and it can be tricky. While it could be that today’s modern businessman might learn a thing or two about branding through hip-hop and playfulness, they should listen up and pay heed to Big Daddy Kane, because when it comes to being playful in business, there can be no half-steppin’.

Congratulations, you played yourself.

Or rather, don’t ever play yourself. DJ Khaled, the undisputed hip-hop authority on success, motivation, and winning, built on what his predecessors like Big Daddy Kane. He created, and deciphered the mechanics around which playfulness can be leveraged to shape a narrative – and this strategy turned him into a chart-topping 21st-century phenomenon. By breaking down his famous catchphrase, “Congratulations, you played yourself,” you might catch a glimpse of his key to playfulness.

To “play yourself” is to reveal, in a moment of weakness, that you used ambition or malice to get ahead and gain an advantage over your competition. It is to admit that you are not what you seem. DJ Khaled’s roadmap to playfulness, and success, can be broken into the following: / “They don’t want you to win [but] we gonna win more. We gonna live more. We the best.” / “The key is to be honest.” / “I put cocoa butter all over my face and my iconic belly and my arms and legs. Why live rough?

Live smooth.” / “I don’t think I would run for president.” / “You gotta water your plants. Nobody can water them for you.”

What does this all mean, and why does it matter? The above quotes by DJ Khaled, while clearly playful, all have one underlying theme: authenticity.

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Individuals respond increasingly well to authentic behaviors and messaging. In “Reaching Generation X: Authenticity in Advertising,” Nielsen, a leading global market research company, highlights that Generation Xers, among others, report heightened appeal and connection with real-world situations and authenticity – a trend that has not gone unnoticed. You might disagree or disprove of DJ Khaled and his techniques, but you can’t deny that his positive, honest, and playful approach is authentic. Playfulness can be a scary thing if you’re not DJ Khaled or in the entertainment industry.

But if playfulness is new to you, here is what you might expect from your audiences: 01 Astonishment This is the moment of connection, the one in which your messaging and the audience first collide. At first, your audience will be confused and taken aback, as playfulness is often unexpected. When DJ Khaled first adopted playfulness, all of hip-hop reacted in a skeptical and incredulous way.

02 Acknowledgment This is the moment of understanding, the one in which your audience recognizes what it is that you are doing. Your playfulness is acknowledged and the audience can react accordingly. This moment came for DJ Khaled when the industry around him recognized the authenticity in his playfulness – what he was doing, while comical, was honest.

03 Admiration This is the moment where it all pays off – the moment in which contemporaries and audiences alike offer respect and clamor for more. DJ Khaled hit this moment with his most recent album, Major Key. In this album, he was able to leverage his playful brand to attract the biggest names in the industry. The result? Chart-topping hits and fans that were quoting his motivational one-liners constantly.

// Being playful can be, and has been for many, a great strategic move. //

Know yourself, know your worth.

Cards Against Humanity, President Obama, McDonald’s, Audi, and Southwest Airlines. What could these five seemingly unrelated brands possibly have in common? And what might they have learned from hip-hop?3 They, among others, embody playfulness and powerfully showcase its role in creating an image that resonates across living rooms, stadiums, driveways, and, most of all, boardrooms. / Cards Against Humanity The party game company regularly conducts counterintuitive and playful marketing campaigns, including raising its prices for Black Friday. / President Obama President Obama and Vice President Biden’s “bromance” was ripe with playfulness, from friendship bracelets to film dedications and memes. / McDonald’s The Egyptian arm of the fast food company partnered with influential social media celebrities in the fall of 2017 and launched a marketing campaign in which users were encouraged to make fun of spelling mistakes McDonald’s had planted. / Audi Audi has had a long-lasting rivalry with other German car makers, but none more playful than the one it has with BMW, which has included viral “billboard wars.” / Southwest Airlines The American airline has used playfulness for decades as a means to differentiate itself from its competitors, most famously with its entertaining flight crew.

But how do they achieve this state of strategic playfulness?

The answer, and what truly allows brands to survive and thrive in this space, is as easy and straightforward as Drake’s lyric: “Know yourself, know your worth.” These brands understand who they are and they present an authentic message to the world. Albeit perhaps unknowingly, the brands above are strict observers of the DJ Khaled method.

How does one achieve and leverage such a state of understanding with one’s self? Quite simply, through ethnography and genius marketers. While the latter is a tad bit difficult to nail down, the former is quite simple.

As an interdisciplinary approach to social studies research, ethnography’s role in playfulness cannot be overstated.

Ethnography, the art and science of telling stories about people’s lives, provides organizations with the tools needed to truly understand who and what they are, both in real and perceived terms. With a mapped identity, organizations can determine which identity traits should be leveraged through playfulness.

And so, although there can be no half-steppin’ when it comes to being playful in business, if you leverage ethnography to get to know yourself and your worth, you can rest assured that you will never play yourself. //// Nic Connolly is an Innovation Strategist at Idea Couture.

1

The author will not apologize for suddenly (playfully) breaking into rhyme.

2

From his shenanigans at Toronto Raptors’ basketball games, to his “memeable” music videos.

3

It is entirely possible that none of these brands used hip-hop as a proof of concept for the role of playfulness. But that certainly shouldn’t stop you.

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Revisiting Sustainability

Playing the System How We Can Reinvigorate Food Through Play

B y K at h l e e n P e k ko l a

“The future of food is food. It’s not tech. It’s not design.

It’s not consumer research. It’s food.”

This statement by Ali Bouzari, a culinary scientist and cofounder of Pilot R&D, kicked off the reThink Food conference co-hosted in Napa California by the Culinary Institute of America and MIT Media Lab. It was a provocative yet refreshing opening statement for one of many conferences held only hours away from Silicon Valley to discuss the future of an industry.

Bouzari’s statement highlighted how there is no magic bullet in food science or tech that will replace the sensorial – and often social – experience of food. Despite the food industry’s ongoing quest for zero-calorie carbs or the perfect sugar replacement, only so much can be done to change the structure of ingredients without compromising on taste, health, and cost. Nonetheless, the food industry will continue to play with its food.

Despite the unlikelihood of finding the perfect sugar replacement, this statement touches on something larger.

The future of food is, and should be, food – the best aspects of food. Food that nourishes our bodies, communities, and world – from soil, to shelf, to satiation.

The Social Function of Food Beyond its functional nutritional value, eating is most often an intensely social activity. From an anthropological perspective, our cultural notions of personhood, kinship, and sharing are all expressed in the way we acquire, prepare, and consume food. Food is a symbol of both security and

affection; it is an integral part of our lives, from dinner dates to the ceremonies, celebrations, and other rituals that make up our lives and cultures.

Yet this notion of food as pleasure is at odds with the environmental and social issues that threaten our food system today. These looming issues are numerous and interconnected, and include climate change, increasing populations, labor abuses, and the increasing rates of obesity juxtaposed with food scarcity. According to the CDC, as of 2014, nearly 40% of American adults were considered obese, while according to the USDA, 1 in 8 Americans are considered food insecure. Even within Silicon Valley, 1 in 4 people are at risk of hunger, as reported by The Guardian in December 2017. In more extreme cases, food scarcity becomes intertwined with existing environmental or economic issues, such as natural disasters, high unemployment, and inflation.

The social value of food can be abruptly overtaken by physiological necessity.

Such issues, while nothing new, have been intensifying since our post-WWII food system gained traction. Often described as “broken,” our food system was actually designed purposefully in this manner: We decided to add sugar and scale food, but we failed to consider how the output of hyper-processed foods would influence the environment and the wellbeing of consumers.

Despite our awareness of these issues today, we still tend to gravitate toward playing with the superficial within the food space, whether through fleeting millennial trends or highly speculative and fantastical food futures. While we may gain some practical insights or inspiration by speculating about what food will look like 20 years from now, thinking so far ahead often prevents us from solving the looming issues of today.

Fortunately, there are some signals of hope. Among certain eaters, there is an increasing desire for food transparency, local produce, and more sustainable products and diets.

Attitudes and behaviors surrounding health, sustainability, and social status are shifting, while many people today – especially Gen Z-ers – believe they can assert more power and influence through what they consume (and what they don’t) than through voting.

The market is responding to these preferences, especially in the startup space, where a breadth of food innovation is taking place. Imperfect Produce, for example, is working to reduce the amount of food wasted, a figure currently estimated at 30% across the world, according to the World Resource Institute. Imperfect Produce estimates that more than 20% of fruits and vegetables grown in America are considered “below-standard” for many grocery store standards of perfection. The company gives “ugly” produce a home, sourcing directly from farms and delivering to customers for 30-50% less than grocery store prices. Other startups, including Impossible Foods, Beyond Meat, and Hampton Creek, are leveraging their food science capabilities to create new alternative meatless and dairy-free options. Meanwhile, the newly launched Ripe.io is utilizing blockchain technology to transform and optimize the supply chain of produce, enabling data transparency from “farm to fork” and, in turn, reducing health risks and concerns, food waste, and the carbon footprint of produce distribution. There are high-profile players in this space as well: Kimbal Musk, Elon Musk’s brother, has devoted his professional career to improving the food system through various projects, including Square Roots. Square Roots is an urban farming accelerator based in Brooklyn where aspiring urban farmers are trained to grow food in hydroponic farms inside large metal shipping containers – and many more founders, entrepreneurial chefs, and farmers are building new kinds food communities and systems all over the world.

Several Big Food brands are investing in such startups.

While the startups work in isolation and are free of the culture, bureaucracy, and slow-moving internal systems that make it challenging for larger companies to go beyond incremental innovation, multinationals have the scale and power to create significant change in our food system. A few recent examples include Kellogg’s acquisition of RXBAR, Unilever’s acquisition of Pukka Herbs, and Tyson Foods’ investment in Beyond Meat.

Solving Big Problems in Big Food While these examples are markers of change, many innovative food trends and services are only accessible to a small percentage of the population – more specifically, to those in urban, affluent areas of North America. If the future of food is food, how do we make healthy, fresh food available and accessible to all communities in the face of increasing income inequality? To solve these systemic problems – as well as those around obesity, food scarcity, and ethical product value chains – we must reimagine our food system – as eaters, as citizens, and as designers, innovators, and other experts in the food space.

As eaters, we can seek and support companies that drive

positive impact. As citizens, we can demand brave and bold leadership within the food industry and government to create change within our food system – leadership that invests in and commits to measures and initiatives that reduce food scarcity, obesity, and unfair labor practices, and that divests from harmful foods and practices while investing in alternatives that nourish our bodies and planet. These demands might seem at odds with the bottom lines of organizations and government; however, if there is enough market demand, we can collectively change our food system and food future.

As designers, innovators, engineers, marketers, and problem solvers working within food, we can continue to leverage human-centered, design-driven strategies – especially among populations with limited access to healthy, sustainable food choices, and among those who are less aware of the impacts of their food choices. While there is tremendous innovation within the food space today, we need adoption to catch up to innovation in order to create change at scale.

This might include the adoption of more sustainable foods and diets, the empowerment of the next wave of farmers, the provision of food education, or the support of waste-reducing food brands. We can also recognize that different eaters and communities require different solutions – not everyone is interested in petri-dish food, soilless vertical farms, or connected food devices and systems. Mass adoption and change requires a human understanding of overlooked eaters across states, cities, and communities. This is especially true for eaters who are less aware or more averse to alternative ingredients, diets, or food sources that enable a more sustainable and healthy food future.

We can also work with different eaters, communities, and workers to solve critical problems across the supply chain.

This might involve engaging overlooked eaters, such as those in rural communities, eaters averse to real foods or new food technology, farmers and laborers, local food organizations, or lower-income families that rely on food from lower-tier retailers. By acknowledging the nuanced cultural norms, traditions, and attitudes surrounding food, we can move away from the one-size-fits-all approach and inspire unique solutions for sustainable and healthier shopping and eating habits. This engagement with a broader set of eaters and experts could also inspire long-term solutions for communities; it could result in a new generation of farmers, or in the development of a local-food network that makes real foods more appealing and accessible.

Our relationship with food is ultimately a reflection of our relationship with the environment – and with one another.

As eaters, citizens, and designers and innovators, we are active participants with the power to shape what and how we eat in the future.

We can create meaningful shared experiences around food and eating, whether that means designing the grocery store of tomorrow or simply sharing a meal. Broadening our understanding of people as eaters will only make the creation and experience of food that much more enjoyable for everyone. //// Kathleen Pekkola is a strategist and ethnographer based in San Francisco.

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B y d r. M e l i s s a At k i n s o n - G r a h a m and Christina Doyle

Feelings at Play

You’re diagnosed with cancer for the second time in your thirties. You have two young children under the age of five.

You’re an entrepreneur in a physically demanding industry.

You work with people whose livelihood depends on your creative vision.

Rendered motionless by the terminal velocity of this diagnosis, your vision is blurred, your arms full of questions too heavy for one person to carry, and your physician has the audacity to joke with you that this is really just “a bout of bad luck.”

Finding Radiant and Radical Ways to Be Present With Cancer

photo: Nikki Leigh McKean

Can you feel that?

Toronto-native Nikki Leigh McKean lived that. Two years after surviving treatment for cervical cancer, she was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. With bandages still covering the wounds from her bilateral mastectomy, surgical drains hanging from either side of her chest, and with more treatment on the horizon, Nikki asked herself: “How am I going to get through this?” Her response was Let’s Radiate – a creative, participatory, and playful project that invites love and light into the darkest corners of cancer.

Let’s Radiate functions as a 16-day journey that is at once a game, a journal, and an effort to build community. The intent of this project is to be able to take experiences that are rife with negativity, fear, and sorrow (like living with cancer) and turn them into what Nikki calls “the most magical experience of your life.”

To do this, Nikki designed the project around a series of decks of cards: yellow cards that outline daily projects, blue cards that offer inspirational quotes, purple cards that offer bonus daily projects, and cards that simply read “feel that.”

Over 16 days, participants complete different activities, ranging from writing a love letter to someone you are working on a relationship with, to hosting a tea party for yourself and an emotion, like anger or sadness. Participants are encouraged to document and share their daily activities on social media using tags like #feelthat and #letsradiate.

These posts also become a powerful source of inspiration for other people engaged in the Let’s Radiate project, and a means for growing a community of support around a diverse set of experiences.

At the core of this project is a radical invitation. Present on every card, and embedded in every activity, is the phrase “feel that.” The potency of this phrase rests in its simplicity; it is both invitational and instructional. To feel that – to be present in a moment, with a feeling, in all its bumps, edges,

bruises, and blushing – is something that is rarely asked of people living with serious diseases.

Indeed, people living with diseases like cancer are often asked a particular kind of question, one that is almost impossible to answer: “How are you feeling?”

It’s the kind of question that puts pressure on the response to be coherent, or deliberate, or at least intelligible to the person asking. Life with cancer rarely harbors any of these adjectives. The question itself diverts attention away from the messiness of feeling – from all those sensations that form inarticulable tears, screams, and belly laughs.

Even when we ask our loved ones living with cancer “how are you feeling?” we are asking to hear their optimism.

We want them to tell us that despite the persistent itch of medical tape, their wavering appetite, the exhaustion they feel aching from their marrow, and the fears and anxieties that bubble up daily, they won’t leave us. We are almost always asking questions about feeling that reflect how we want them to feel when it comes to this disease: We hope that they, like us, have hope for their survival.

By asking participants to play through daily activities of feeling, Nikki has created space for people to be present, and for their presence in a feeling to be enough. This is a significant gesture, considering most people living with cancer and other diseases are often asked to reflect on their feelings in ways that pull them out of their present. Moreover, these playful modes of bringing love and light into the lives of people caught in the shadow of a serious disease have important implications for how we think about the role of play in understanding and supporting the experience of living with diseases like cancer.

Anthropologists and social theorists have long argued that play itself is a form of world making. Play, in all of its varied and various forms, is a process of imagining and bringing to life new possibilities for thinking, feeling, and interacting. Sociologist Thomas Henricks contends that play is an important practice for social and cultural change, as it is through play that people express their “commitments to make and inhabit a new world.” Through improvisational acts of play, we bring new worlds to life.

By creating conditions to feel that in its wild and wonderful forms, Nikki and those who participate in Let’s Radiate are opening and sustaining a project that worlds new possibilities of living with and living through disease. It is precisely in this unique combination of invitation and instruction to feel that where we see the idea of play being reframed in generative ways.

The forms of play in Let’s Radiate are about more than enjoyment and entertainment. To play with practices of radiating love and light for oneself and others is about grappling with existence in its complexities. Nikki has animated worldly sets of relating that begin with feeling in its rawest sense – not for anyone or toward any prefigured end.

This is playing with the very substance of being – a critical and radial act for people living with diseases like cancer who are often forced to focus on preserving their life, not playing with it.

To start with a feeling, and to ask what it might mean to care for that feeling, is a bold proposition. It is one we hear as a call to reorient how we, in the healthcare space,

approach understanding and solutioning for the experience of living with cancer.

In play-filled projects like Let’s Radiate, we see people living with cancer creating and playing in worlds where their feelings matter – worlds where new, more empowered forms of living with cancer become evident through acts of being present with feeling. When it comes to supporting the lives of people living with cancer, Let’s Radiate gives us a whole new set of questions, and a very different starting point to feel our way toward answers.

Taking this project as an invitation and instruction to shape and realize better futures, what new worlds of living with this disease emerge when we start in and with a feeling? No prescriptive outcomes, no expectations. Just feeling. What comes to light, and what light can we bring to darkness? //// Dr. Melissa Atkinson-Graham is a Resident Medical Anthropologist at Idea Couture.

Christina Doyle is a Senior Innovation Strategist at Idea Couture.

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improvised and sometimes even created on the spot. During our travels, we would invent ideas, and the factory shop would make prototypes overnight to play with the next day. Play is not just a method; it is part of the job.

While many industries enjoy the benefits of a creative environment, most aren’t so lucky. But even the most traditional corporations are beginning to discover room for play in their day-to-day operations. Many companies are quick to add colorful couches and ping pong tables to their space, but these are merely cosmetic.

Google is at the fore of this trend and is famous for providing creative workspaces with fancy cafeteria food and other perks. Enterprises all around the world have created comfortable meeting spaces, breakout rooms, and gaming areas where staff can chill out, chat, and stimulate their creative juices. The idea is to provide spaces to encourage conversation and exploration in a way that gets employees to ask more creative questions.

However, real play cannot happen in designated spaces; there is always a need to use external spaces, talent, and stimulants. As Mark Rhodes of reed.co.uk explained in an article for The Guardian in 2016, “The most successful businesses are those that engender creative thinking and develop environments where everyone generates ideas, has a voice, asks questions, and challenges the norm.”

It should not be limited to the cafeteria.

Making Work Play or Making Play Work

The Tom Sawyer Approach

Some adults tend to think of play as something for children; for busy grownups with more important things to do, play is a waste of time.

But in my experience as a designer and entrepreneur, the opposite is true. Incorporating play into the workplace is an excellent way to solve problems and increase productivity – and it’s fun.

Playmates Two heads are better than one.

Three? Even better. When we were children, we learned so much from playing with others, including how to negotiate and cooperate. As adults, it’s easy to forget these crucial lessons.

At Umbra, our team of international designers allows us to lead on a global level. In the studio, every final

product is a group effort, the result of constant collaboration. When we’re looking for new recruits, “plays well with others” is a crucial requirement.

Building a successful team is about more than simply filling seats based on talent; for any business, finding team players is key.

Creative people enjoy working on teams and interacting with like-minded people. When it comes to team design, there is always a great deal of argument and encouragement – and this always leads to new ideas.

You know how it works. You take your idea into the group and they respond to it. Maybe someone suggests trying it upside down, or changing the material, or adding a lever – who knows? But as you synthesize the input, your product begins to shape into something better and smarter than before.

Playgrounds Consider the idea of a playground. It’s a space where we play, whether figuratively or literally. At Umbra, we have a studio specifically intended for designers to experiment. Here, they can play with ideas and materials.

Organized play doesn’t only yield better design – it makes work fun.

We brought this idea of a playground abroad during visits to our partner factories in China, Thailand, and India. The uninteresting products on display there demonstrated the technical capabilities and materials of the factories. But I’ve always enjoyed taking things apart, reconfiguring their elements, and toying with them. Most products we had in the works were pre-designed with little latitude for change, but the best and some of the most profitable designs were the products of play: those that had been

photo: rawpixel

By Paul Rowa n

// When we’re looking for new recruits, “plays well with others” is a crucial requirement. //

Playthings As designers, our toys are getting better all the time. When I started my career, I doodled and sketched with markers and paper pads. Now I use sketchbook software on my smartphone.

There’s a huge range of technology available to help us doodle. We can use programs to play with datasets on our computers. When we’re satisfied with the results, we can simply print out the design in 3D. We can turn our playful musings into material objects with the touch of a button.

And of course, there’s always LEGO. We all played with building blocks as kids, and some of us are still stacking. In the studio, designers use building blocks of a sort: the physical components of our design projects, which we manipulate and reorganize.

This kind of hands-on experimentation makes the process fun and playful and often leads to the formation of entirely new concepts.

When our creative and playful minds are engaged, we forget that we’re working. We lose ourselves in a project, task, or challenge; we become immersed in the act of doing. This state is a breeding ground for great ideas and work.

Enter the Business of Play These days, companies are struggling to be customer-centric. They are imagining new applications of both old and new technologies, and they are trying to define new ways to reconfigure their business and redesign their business models. It takes more than a few creative people or a few offsites to achieve these goals.

Companies need to inspire a sense of play in every function – moving beyond playful marketing and product design and into meaningful play for operations and information technology departments alike. Playing within a singular business function is good, but the best outcomes emerge from playing across functional units and disciplines.

As a business leader, you must ensure that there are spaces and mechanisms for play set up within your business, mechanisms that go beyond informal spaces for co-working and siloed instances of experimentation. Don’t let oversimplified success metrics and measurements stranglehold the results out of your team. You need to foster a deeply playful culture that inspires an environment of customer-centric and breakthrough thinking. It is time companies learn how to play seriously. //// Paul Rowan is Cofounder of Umbra and CCO of paulrowan.ca.

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zero gravity cuisine

Reimagining the Experience of Space Food

illustration: Jemuel Datiles and Kapil Vachar

By Maggie Coblentz a n d Tay l o r D e n n is

This article is based on research currently being conducted by author Maggie Coblentz at the Rhode Island School of Design. The viewpoints in this article reflect those of Coblentz, and will be further explored in her thesis, currently in development, which examines the ways in which innovative food design can improve the health and happiness of astronauts on long-term missions.

It’s 2034, and after nearly a year of travel, a crew of NASA astronauts have entered low-Mars orbit. Here, they will perform research to learn more about what it will take for humans to land – and stay – on Mars.

With this information, NASA will begin preparing for the final step in its decades-long endeavor: successful descent, landing, and extended resource use on Mars. If all goes according to plan, the astronauts will return to Earth in 2036.

Exciting as this may sound, there are still a multitude of challenges to be overcome before a mission to Mars is possible. Of course, there are the technical feats required to enter the planet’s orbit – not to mention the profound financial cost of such an endeavor. But there’s also another factor to consider, one that is often overlooked by those with big dreams of widespread space travel: astronaut happiness.

Eating as Entertainment: Overcoming Boredom in Space Boredom and depression are obstacles often faced by astronauts, particularly those on long missions – a detail that has not been ignored by those looking to Mars. Researchers are already studying the psychological and social effects of long space missions. The Hawai’i Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) Habitat, for example, is an analog habitat designed to mimic the conditions of a mission to Mars. Campaigns last 4-12 months and see crew members living together in close quarters and performing all the tasks associated with habitation on Mars.

The first HI-SEAS study, conducted in 2013 for four months, focused on a specific aspect of astronaut wellbeing: eating. In addition to comparing the psychological and physiological benefits of two food systems, the study looked at the feasibility of using hydroponics on Mars. Based on his experiences, HI-SEAS crew commander Angelo Vermeulen reported a need for spices and herbs, as well as comfort foods and higherprotein options.

Real astronauts have reported similar desires for better food choices that alleviate the monotony of space travel, remind them of home, and generally bring comfort and familiarity.

Current space foods, which mostly consist of Meals, Ready to Eat (MREs), provide nourishment – but they don’t address the larger role food plays in a person’s identity, and they don’t do much to bring comfort or joy. As the Mars race gains traction, designers must play with existing options and new possibilities to create food products that promote human connectedness while also fulfilling essential nutritional needs.

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The Challenges of Space Food

Martian Problems, Human Solutions

Some barriers to designing satisfying space food are better known than others. It might be obvious, for example, that a spacecraft must be equipped with enough non-perishable food items to feed a crew for the duration of their mission (plus emergency stores), or even that eating certain foods without the aid of gravity is difficult. But what about the other less-known challenges?

For starters, reduced gravity affects the fluid distribution in an astronaut’s body upon arrival in space, leading to a change in taste perception, a temporary effect that could be reduced or altered by promoting interactions between different sensory modalities to improve taste perception.

Additionally, while NASA’s current space food system offers some variability in menu items, the freezedried and pre-packaged MREs delivered in plastic bags do little to disrupt monotony or emulate the experience of preparing food and eating on Earth.

Another interesting phenomenon experienced by astronauts is the Overview Effect. Many who experience seeing Earth from orbit describe experiencing a feeling of heightened connectedness and a new perspective of time, life, and humanity. This profound feeling lies in stark contrast to the mundane food options available to those experiencing it. With such a powerful existential experience so common to space travel, it seems short-sighted to assume that the foods people enjoy on Earth would taste the same on another planet – context, after all, is key to the eating experience.

So, how can we play with space food to make it more enjoyable, both to prepare and to eat? How can we use food, that great unifier, to improve the entire experience of space travel?

First, we can look at how people eat on Earth compared to how they dine in space. On Earth, the methods for eating vary greatly depending on the food, who the eater is, and their cultural background. Think about how it feels to break a pistachio from its shell or to peel an orange. Consider how different it feels to lick an ice cream cone than it does to bite into a hot slice of pizza, or how satisfying it can be to twist spaghetti around your fork or bite into a crisp apple. In space, most food comes in – and is eaten directly out of – a vacuumsealed bag. Providing greater variety in how food is delivered – in terms of both packaging and actual form – could be one step toward breaking the monotony around eating in space.

What if astronauts could gnaw freeze-dried meat from an inflatable bone, or experience the texture of fresh fruit?

Next, we can consider context.

Technological advances may be leveraged to create a more familiar context around mealtime in space.

Using VR, we could create a stronger parallel between the joy we experience when eating on Earth and the necessity of maintaining caloric intake while in space. Imagine that while eating a freeze-dried lasagna bar, an astronaut could simultaneously see, through immersive VR, images of her mother cooking in her childhood kitchen. British chef Heston Blumenthal is already experimenting in this space with a theatrical restaurant called The Fat Duck, where sensory experiences are paired with certain dishes to evoke specific times and places. VR could also be used to determine which flavors astronauts will enjoy most while on Mars; if researchers were to pair the experience of immersive VR depictions of Mars with the eating of different foods, they could begin to predict how people might perceive taste on this foreign planet.

When considering context, the Overview Effect should not be ignored

– what effect might routinized, banal eating experiences have on a demographic experiencing a heightened awareness of human connectedness and community? What existing symbols, textures, and cues from food will allow deep space explorers to stay connected with their past, and how can we abstract food in a way that tells new stories about humanity and life? Here, inspiration can be drawn from Central, a restaurant by Chef Virgilio Martínez Véliz in Lima, Peru. Central serves dishes inspired by the diversity of life that thrives across the range of extreme altitudes in Peru.

Last but not least, we need to look at the social aspect of eating. To counter the effects of prolonged time spent in close quarters during a journey to Mars, we will need to embrace food design that encourages crew members to engage in food preparation and eating rituals together.

How can we create food that is shareable, or food that is reminiscent of meals that are traditionally shared?

In short, how can we design an eating experience that improves camaraderie and has positive social effects?

The connecting thread between these different challenges – thriving while living in space – is still an elusive concept to most. But the tasks and obstacles of everyday life are familiar to the many, and it is this understanding of ordinary human needs and desires that will allow us to improve the experience of space travel for astronauts. While the problems themselves are rooted in something quite foreign, the solutions belong to a much more familiar domain: human-centric design. //// Maggie Coblentz is a food designer pursuing a master’s in Industrial Design at the Rhode Island School of Design. She is currently a researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology CoLab. Taylor Dennis is an Editor at Idea Couture.

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Think of a game you consider yourself to be good at.

Any game will do – a board game, a sport, anything with a defined set of rules. When you play that game, are you actively thinking about the rules? I would posit that, in most instances, you’re not thinking about them; you just know them. My sport of choice growing up was rugby union, a shockingly complex game that has finicky rules that govern 15 players in a relentless struggle of strategy and physicality.

After playing for a while, however, the rules were rarely on my mind; I turned my focus instead to execution and to understanding the opponent. Playing within the rules became a given.

When games look similar, people often assume that being good at one should make you good at another. For instance, people often imagine that American football players would make good rugby players and vice versa. The rationale is reasonable. Big, fast people are common in both sports, the balls and fields are similar, and the goal is the same: get the ball in the end zone or kick it between the posts to outscore the other team. When players attempt to cross over, however, they are often ineffective or, worse yet, they get injured quickly. Similarly, it’s not hard to imagine a chess grandmaster trying checkers for the first time and being felled by a decent player despite the near identical board and playing conditions. For all the similarities within each pair of games, the rules at play are different, and nothing seems intuitive. While the football player’s athleticism and the chess master’s mental prowess will surely prove valuable at some point, each player will make some potentially costly mistakes if they do not devote themselves to learning the rules.

On the other hand, imagine taking Wayne Gretzky in his prime and asking him to play three on three instead of five on five. He would still be an effective force on the rink. In fact, the three-on-three game may even be favorable for Gretzky, who always thrived in open spaces during his NHL career.

The alterations in the rules, while substantial, keep the intuitive feel of the sport intact. Similarly, restricting Gretzky in some ways – such as only allowing him to shoot with his backhand – would limit him, but he would likely still be a formidable player.

Similar situations arise outside of sports on a regular basis, in business, public service, and in almost any other field you might pursue. Consider medication adherence – getting people to keep taking their medication properly – a problem that gets a lot of attention in the health world. Companies producing Western medications spend massive amounts of time thinking about how to ensure patients keep taking their pills and stay on protocols. A host of strategies, ranging from

photo: idris mootee

Learn the Rules Before Playing the Game

By To m M as t ers o n, w i t h B r u ce T h o m as

directly observing patients taking their medication to embedding sensors in pills, have been deployed. Whether the pharma company implementing these methods has motivations driven by profits or by patient outcomes, their objective is the same.

Imagine you’ve successfully developed an adherence solution for weight management. The patient population you’ve addressed is middle-aged men in North America, and the solution is a simple digital application. Based on its success, you are considered something of an expert in adherence. If I were to then task you with designing a new adherence solution for young adult men in North America, you would likely hit the ground running. While the conditions are fairly different, the principles that make the rules of the “game” are largely the same, and the task will seem intuitive.

You might simply make a more sophisticated version of your last product to suit a more digitally adept population.

But what about a pediatric population, or elderly people who need to gain weight instead of lose it? Do these patients have access to or the ability to use digital applications?

Are their behavioral drivers the same? What if the medication was for a sexually transmitted infection? The stigmas surrounding weight problems and sexually transmitted infections are wildly different. And what if I asked you to design for a population in rural Peru? Suddenly, cultural and language barriers would come into play. Despite your experience and expertise in adherence, trying to implement your “proven solution” in these alternative scenarios would leave you with an ineffective solution. You would need to learn the new rules to play in these new scenarios.

Moving from the hypothetical to the real, with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Government of India’s Revised National TB Control Program (RNTCP) recently piloted a tuberculosis medication-adherence program in India called 99DOTS. Even surface-level research would tell you that mobile phone penetration in India is fairly high, even in less affluent areas, and that frequent clinic visits lead locals to become stigmatized. Based on this, you might decide that a lightweight application that would allow patients to be monitored from a distance could be developed for monitoring and tracking. If you trusted your gut there, you would likely fail at the moment of download.

Because if you were to delve deeper, you would learn that most of the mobile phones in India are not smartphones.

So, you might think, perhaps healthcare providers could call or text these patients in a systematic way to check in on them. Wrong again.

Thankfully, the team behind 99DOTS didn’t stop at surfacelevel research, or even one layer below. They did in-depth fieldwork and observed the technology environment, mobile phone behaviors, and patient/user cultural norms. With this deliberate act of immersion, they were able to learn the rules at play. They discovered that the high number of “spam” SMS messages limited the utility of SMS. Combined with high prices for voice calls and text messages, this high volume of spam had driven locals to develop a language of missed calls. People effectively page one another by calling and hanging up in patterns, allowing them to avoid any charges from the telecom providers.

With this key insight in hand, the 99DOTS team developed a solution. By buying a large bank of toll-free phone

// When games look similar, people often assume that being good at one should make you good at another. //

numbers, they could associate a unique random phone number with each pill. When the patient takes the pill from the packaging, it reveals the number. They “send a free call” to the number and hang up, creating a data trail in a computer system to indicate that they’ve taken the pill. This hybrid of high and low tech has produced stunning results at an astonishingly low cost of less than $5 per patient over 6 months.

The funny thing is that the solution works brilliantly in India and Myanmar, but if you were to deploy the same mechanism in California, it would likely fail. People would rather push a button or swallow a microchip that sends a signal to their smartphone when it touches stomach acid than place a phone call.

It’s a strange thing to consider yourself an expert in something and yet find yourself completely inept due to a shift in context. This speaks to a real business need, one that requires great humility: accepting that you might not know enough to solve a problem you’re supposed to be an expert in. With that understanding, however, you are open to learning, and one step closer to success.

But how should you go about learning? Sometimes it’s better to learn by doing, while other times it’s best to prepare extensively. In technology, where speed to market can make or break your company, it can be best to introduce a product you aren’t comfortable with, knowing full well you have the freedom to adjust it as you go. In pharmaceuticals, knowing a drug has been well received by oncologists in lung cancer does not guarantee a similar reception in bladder cancer, even with similar data, and new messaging must be written and evidence assembled. For surgeons, knowing how to perform a kidney transplant on a 45-year-old man is wildly different than performing the same procedure on a 6-month-old baby – and each requires years of preparation.

If you want to play a new game, you have to learn the rules through preparation or immersive iteration. Determining the best approach all comes down to a singular question: How many mistakes are you willing to make? //// Tom Masterson is a Senior Healthcare Innovation Strategist at Idea Couture.

Bruce Thomas is Founder and Managing Director at Arcady Group, LLC.

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By Juliana Ciccarelli a n d D o m i n i c Sm i t h

The ancient Chinese game of Go is notoriously complex. However, at its heart, it represents the essence of all games: the need to find creative solutions within a defined framework.

As companies look to introduce innovative solutions, the need to bring together efficiency and creativity often creates a latent tension between individuals and on project teams.

Despite everyone’s shared desire to produce the best possible result, what all parties believe is possible doesn’t always align. Understanding this tension and bringing together skillsets is a necessity for the conceptualization and execution of innovative solutions.

Creative work means playing. You have to play with expectations, with preconceived notions, and with what is possible. However, too much play

can have a negative impact on the perception of creative teams within business. If all creatives do is play, the burden of work falls on their more structured, process-driven colleagues.

As a result, creative teams can sometimes find themselves positioned as a “nice to have” in the realm of strategic decision making.

But this mindset leads to questions.

Is creativity just play? And is process little more than a rigid set of rules enforced by people who lack creative flair? The answer to both questions is, of course, no. But they are opinions that are consistently perpetuated. In a 2015 Harvard Business Review article, “To Get More Creative Become Less Productive,” this familiar mode of thought is summed up: “Productive people move through the tasks they have to accomplish in a systematic way. They make steady and measurable progress toward their goals. They make effective and

efficient use of their time. Creativity… doesn’t. Creativity needs time and space to grow.” There are two central issues with this thought process: First, it positions creativity as an unproductive trait; and second, it works off the assumption that those working systematically do so because they live in a world in which creativity has been removed from their daily lives.

Yet this simply isn’t the case. Those who are in charge of the creation and implementation of processes need creativity in their working lives much the same way that designers, writers, and videographers do. The pitfall that revenue-driven organizations can often fall into is to put inflexible, uncreative processes in place to reduce costs and time in order to increase profits and operational efficiencies, with innovation being sacrificed in order to create short-term solutions. However, as more and more companies are fostering multidisciplinary teams, the line between process and creativity is blurring – something that is long overdue.

Navigating this new work structure requires much more than a simple standardized plan: It requires creativity.

Creativity to reimagine possible outcomes of different observations, to consider different learning styles or team dynamics, and to constantly ask “What if?”

Bringing creativity and questioning into process is necessary to the maintenance of individual morale and the improvement of overall results.

For the individual, a lack of diversity in daily life leads to tasks that are mundane, repetitive, and capable of being done by computers. And, from an enterprise’s perspective, the consequences are just as apparent, with monotonous routine leading to the production of forgettable deliverables and a complete halt in company innovation due to low employee engagement.

This isn’t to say that process and structure should take a backseat to creativity. Instead, creativity should be integrated into well-established and defined systems to help improve them. In reality, regardless of their role, everyone wants to think creatively in order to generate genuinely innovative solutions. This means incorporating creatives into project

plans in a way that allows them to produce their best work, and allowing those in charge of process to be creative in the way they structure the plan. Alongside this is a responsibility to rally teams around a better designed, more flexible process and to challenge the bolder members of your team to push the edges of the plan’s boundaries in order to challenge where improvements can be made.

To truly unite creativity and process, organizations must move away from profit-driven motivations and toward customer-driven goals. To do this, they must ensure time for creativity is built into their processes. An organization that has the architecture to support creative thinkers by incorporating design throughout each stage of the solutioning process will house more agile, innovative, and adaptable teams.

The question is: How do we implement this?

Let’s return to the game of Go. The number of possible different game scenarios is so large that it’s often compared to the number of atoms in the universe. The nearly infinite number of moves can feel utterly overwhelming, and, as a result, it can feel impossible to pick out the right solution from this amorphous mass.

This is no different from finding solutions in a business context.

Without parameters or process, there is no way of making sense out of the chaos.

In Go, the rules act as the necessary parameters to make success a possibility. The near-infinite number of moves is narrowed down to a maximum of 361 possible, legal moves, some of which will be more successful than others. The act of placing a process on creativity actively channels creative thought.

This is why it’s necessary to extend our understanding of what a project plan can be. Rather than having a one-size-fits-all project plan – which limits us to just a few possible moves, potentially cutting out the winning move – it is essential to design a multidisciplinary toolkit that can be tailored to each specific situation.

Building the Toolkit

Using the Toolkit

Understand the rules of the game. Your toolkit has to be specific to your company and the capabilities you possess.

Don’t design a toolkit for a game you aren’t playing. The first step is to truly understand the types of projects you work on, ensuring that they are aligned with your strategy, core offerings, business objectives, and organizational purpose.

Pick your players.

Every project is as unique as the people who will work on it. Having designed a multi-faceted, multidisciplinary, flexible toolkit, make sure you are picking the right people for the right projects.

1

Identify your key players.

A truly comprehensive toolkit cannot be built in isolation of the people you will have working within its framework. Recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of team members will allow you to design a process that meshes with the skills of every team member.

2

Push the boundaries. Every person within a team will work differently. You will have people who need rigid process to move forward and those who fight against it. Your toolkit should be built with these extreme examples in mind.

If you design for those that push the boundaries, you open up the possibilities for every team member to work efficiently while still producing innovative and meaningful work.

3

Create a cheat sheet.

Navigating a project will always have moments of tension.

However, by building the possibility for tension into the design of the toolkit, you will be better able to turn tension into success. Your toolkit should incorporate the knowledge gained from previous projects so you can manipulate the framework as the project progresses, tightening or loosening the parameters based on how the project is faring.

4

Become the master tactician. Great players of any game never stop looking for new tactics for improving. No matter how many times you’ve won, in an evolving world the best solution is always going to shift. Even if you’re in the midst of a winning streak, don’t be afraid to introduce new tactics.

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1

Choose a game plan.

The success of the toolkit, and ultimately the project, depends on tailoring your game plan for the occasion. This includes mitigating risk by preparing for the worst-case scenario. You can’t be taken aback or overwhelmed by problems you foresaw.

2

Evolve as you play.

A well-designed toolkit that is truly comprehensive can be altered as projects progress.

If you’re coming up with innovative solutions, the toolkit will have to bend to fit a new paradigm that couldn’t have been imagined before you started.

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4

Go! The most necessary, but difficult step: Just get started.

The toolkit should be the perfect blend of these two seemingly opposing methods; it should beautify the process of creating something new. Great process allows creativity to flourish beyond the set boundaries, and it is always ready to be redesigned in response to creative breakthroughs. The next move is yours. //// Juliana Ciccarelli is a Practice and Technical Project Manager at Idea Couture.

Dominic Smith is an Editor at Idea Couture.

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Data

Playing

By W illi a m D o w lin g, M aya O c z e r e t k o, a n d E r ic Tay lo r

With

Complete this sentence: “Data is ________.” Complex? Important?

Boring? Whichever word you chose, we’re guessing groundbreaking wasn’t the first thing that came to mind. When we think about data, the first thing that comes to mind is often spreadsheets full of numbers or ones and zeroes flying across a computer screen. While this certainly constitutes one type of data, it only represents the tip of the iceberg of the world of data around us. We are continually absorbing and processing data as part of our everyday lives, and with accelerated advancements in AI and machine learning, we are now able to bring together human and machine capabilities like never before.

These technologies allow us to play with data in new and profound ways, which can lead brands and companies to groundbreaking innovations and designs.

When you do something fun, like watch a movie or listen to music, your brain is processing the data of sight and sound. When you bite into an apple, it is processing the data of taste and texture. Until recently, it was all but impossible for computers to handle this type of data in the same way that our brains do. After all, how do you quantify a sight? How do you assign numbers to a sound?

Big data now makes this type of information processing possible.

Machine learning is helping us understand the data we collect in increasingly sophisticated ways – and many organizations are learning how to best leverage it.

The team at CircleUp, an investment platform that helps consumer startups raise capital to innovate, is using machine learning and big data to disrupt the world of consumer goods.

Their team of data scientists leverages machine-learning algorithms to monitor and evaluate an average of 92,000 data points per company*, using this data to help early-stage consumer brands connect with leading investors. Not only do the data scientists at CircleUp think about the way consumer products look, taste, and feel, but they also use modeling and big data analytics to capture this information at scale. This union between machine and mind is able to fundamentally change the way startups seek capital investment.

CircleUp is not interested in the way one product looks or tastes; instead, they seek this information about all products. By drawing on this aggregate data and these machine-supplemen– *CircleUp ted insights, the evaluated more company can fuel than 92,000 data points per capital and accelecompany rate growth between 2012 and 2015. for startup brands.

The team recently built a model in Helio, their machine-learning platform, to analyze colors on packaging labels. As any marketer knows, color psychology plays an instrumental role in consumer purchasing behavior; indeed, a study by Satyendra Singh published in 2006 in Management Decision suggested that the colors used in packaging design can influence a consumer’s perception of a product by as much as 60-90%.

Since the average grocery store stocks 50,000 products and can have up to 40 varieties for certain items, catching a customer’s eye quickly can mean the difference between the purchase of one product over another. The color analysis model in Helio was built to determine which packaging colors were more prominent in a particular product category, as well as to compare how colors differ across categories. This information could help marketers and designers re-envision the way they think about packaging design. While much has been written from a marketing standpoint about brand design and color psychology, there hasn’t been a large-scale color analysis of labels for products currently on the market.

While many designers are thinking about how to design a logo, a label, or a brand, marketers and designers have yet to look holistically at what’s already out there to uncover new insights and think about the use of color in new ways. The model is still in its early stages, but its preliminary findings are quite expansive and fun to look at.

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Doing This at Scale The same analysis was done for 5,400 yogurt packages to see what colors jumped out.

It turns out that the Fage packaging was a bit of an anomaly in terms of colors. The average yogurt package looks more like this:

How the Model Works The team built the model to process information like the human brain does. It works by taking images of packaging labels and running them through an image-processing algorithm, which identifies prominent colors and assigns higher weights to colors of critical objects. For example, the algorithm would assign a higher weight to the color of a brand logo than it would to a background, even if the background color occupied a greater surface area of the packaging. The colors analyzed are represented by the color palette below, which features 27 colors:

Comparing and Contrasting Categories The next step is to ask how yogurt packaging compares to other categories. Are the average colors found in yogurt packaging unique, or are these trends pretty uniform across other consumer products? The average color distirbutions for yogurt, coffee, ice cream, and nutrition bar packaging can be found below.

More Common in Yogurt

More Common in Coffee

more common in YOGURT more common in COFFEE More Common in Yogurt

The average of colors is pretty telling and straightforward, but looking at all the colors at once is where this gets really interesting. For the visualization below, the CircleUp team ran the images through a k-means clustering algorithm with ten clusters to make it easier to see the most common color schemes.

More Common in Ice Cream and Novelties

more common in YOGURT more common in ICE_CREAM_AND_NOVELTIES More Common in Yogurt

The algorithm picks up these colors and then assigns a weight to them based on their prominence on the packaging. Take, for example, this Fage pineapple yogurt packaging:

More Common in Nutritional Bars

Here, more patterns emerge. Yogurt labels are quite a bit more colorful morethe common NUTRITIONAL_BARS than otherincategories examined, with nutrition bars coming closest to matching the variety of colors found.

images

When analyzing Fage’s packaging, the program picked up 13 primary colors. The higher the bar in the accompanying graph, the more noticeable the color is to the average viewer.

Because the blue and red of Fage’s logo quickly draw the consumer’s attention, those colors score highly. Contrast this to the packaging for the plain Fage yogurt container below, which has far fewer colors:

more common in YOGURT

painting by numbers

value

At first blush, the chart may look like a really cool piece of modern art (it could be!), but there are also a lot of insights to unpack. Each horizontal line in the chart represents a different yogurt package. Without microscopic vision, no one could discern individual labels, but looking at all the labels at once does uncover noticeable patterns. The labels all have a lot of white, while the labels with orange usually have red or pink and those with a lot of grey and black feature fewer colors – not anything surprising to the experienced graphic designer.

At first glance, there don’t seem to be dramatic differences across the different categories.

In order to make these differences easier to analyze, the team subtracted the colors of one category from another to pinpoint net differences with yogurt packaging as the control.

We have access to more kinds of data than ever before. Not only can we quantify what a human sees or tastes, but we can do so in such a way that a human brain alone can’t – allowing for valuable insights to be unlocked.

Does the packaging color data we explored have other implications?

Will this color model help predict future brand strength, purchase drivers, or overall business growth? We think it might. It’s been very clear from package redesigns that simple changes to a product’s visual aesthetic can significantly impact sales. In 2017, for example, Lean Cuisine redesigned their packaging to look more modern and sleek, and their sales increased by $58M. Likewise, after its packaging was redesigned to reflect the product’s simplicity, sales for nutritional bar RXBar skyrocketed, leading to its acquisition by Kellogg for a staggering $600M. Now, imagine if you could capture these data-driven insights by working with machines to augment human judgment. We’re just starting to understand the realm of possibility for combining the capabilities of the machine and mind, and we believe this new way of decision making will inform a great deal of groundbreaking work. //// William Dowling is a Research Manager at CircleUp. Maya Oczeretko is a Senior Innovation Strategist at Idea Couture.

Eric Taylor is a Senior Data Scientist at CircleUp.

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How to Win at Building Brand Love

By Charles Andrew

What is that indefinable brand quality every company wants to achieve in the minds of their customers?

Advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi calls it “loyalty that goes beyond reason,” or, more simply, “love.” This level of devotion may even have physiological implications. In 2011, the BBC program Secrets of Superbrands worked with a team of neuroscientists to use MRI technology to compare the brains of Apple fans to those of people who identify as very religious. The researchers found an overlap between the parts of the brain activated when an Apple fan saw an Apple product and a religious person

saw imagery related to their faith.

This near-religious status of devotion is achieved by extremely few brands. Ask yourself, how many occupy this position for you? For many people, only small, niche brands inspire this kind of love. Artisanal foodie outlets – such as indie coffee shops, local bakeries, or other eateries – come to mind. On a much larger marketing scale, you may think of tech companies, like Apple, an upmarket car marque, or your favorite luxury brand. In other words, the number of brands for which you feel “loyalty beyond reason” does not comprise a long list – so getting people to feel this way about your brand is probably going to take something special.

photo: idris mootee

There are three approaches an organization can take to establish brand loyalty

Pay

Pray

Play

Many brands seek to achieve consumer loyalty by making an enormous marketing investment; in other words, they pay for their customers’ loyalty – a lot. Putting aside the importance of other factors, like using emotive storytelling for improved communication with consumers, there are major challenges to prioritizing an investment-based strategy. This approach will certainly be expensive, and it may very well be derailed by the organization’s fear of taking a risk when the ROI is difficult to track.

Finally, it could result in an enormously engaging advertising effort rather than consumer brand engagement.

As a consumer, how often have you loved a piece of communication rather than the brand that delivered it? The fact remains that success at the level of “love” is achieved by very few.

If the first approach is to pay, the second is to try something different and pray that it works. Most organizations are reluctant to admit that, from time to time, they have prescribed to this approach. When you hear about a brand’s strategy being “bold” or “brave,” the “pray” strategy is often at play; all fingers (and other available limbs) are being tightly crossed in the hope that it all pays off. Though all strategy involves some roll of the dice, the key is to weight the dice as heavily as possible – clearly, praying for success alone is not a sufficient strategy.

The final approach is to play. A playbased strategy looks at how to build brand love through a completely different frame than that typically seen in the world of communication.

In traditional marketing, something passes from the brand to the audience or consumer. When play is used to create this connection, marketing becomes more about building active engagement; that is, the customer experiences the brand rather than simply receiving messages about it.

Brands that have achieved levels of love and loyalty that transcend the rational all have something in common.

In different ways, they all deliver rich and immersive experiences. These can be described at some length, and somatically, as they are not just engagements of the intellect, but of the senses.

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A NEW ONLINE MAGAZINE IS BORN

A Closer Look at Play in Branding To fully understand the play approach, we must look at the nature of play itself. What is it, and what does it offer to brand strategy? This topic has a long history of research that goes as far back as Plato. For the purposes of this article, we will focus on one common definition of play: an activity that enables safe experimentation and learning. For instance, social play enables rules and boundaries to be explored, tested, and learned without the risk of doing something wrong. Play – however intense and purposeful it may be – is about pleasure rather than work or duty. Play need not be about frivolity, nor must it be designated as childish; but it is engaging, and it comes without the weight of expectation for “real world” outcomes.

With this in mind, play presents a great opportunity for brands wanting to build deep engagement with their consumers. A play-based strategy should help customers engage, enjoy, and experience in ways that minimize the barriers of risk or cost. For example, Apple stores deliberately feel like places customers can enter without the intent of making a purchase; they are playgrounds for browsing and advice. Burberry soared to success when, in 2016, it began allowing customers to buy clothes online directly after seeing them on the catwalk. Meanwhile, Disney’s immaculate online experience allows customers to explore different options and possibilities as they plan their trips to the theme parks.

These different brands all allow their customers to experience much of the pleasure of anticipation without obligation.

It’s relatively easy to see how brands that are already deeply experiential engage customers without overtly focusing on the transaction at hand, and this principle can also be applied more broadly. While a part of fans’ loyalty to Apple, for example, is gained via the experience offered by the brand’s brick-and-mortar stores, there is also a wealth of opportunity for brands like Apple to create better experiences via digital. Clothes and accessories can be modeled via

// Researchers found an overlap between the parts of the brain activated when an Apple fan saw an Apple product and a religious person saw imagery related to their faith. //

avatars; customers can visualize home goods and furnishings in their houses using augmented reality (AR); services can be personalized; stories can be shared in new and interesting ways; and brand worlds can be created for customers to explore.

Finally, while “play” is distinct from the “real” experience it imitates, it is important to recognize that the two do intersect. One of the most fascinating of all neurological phenomena (and the competition is intense) can be seen in the theory of mirror neurons. Simply put, mirror neurons help people imitate and understand behavior, as they fire both when an animal performs an action and when the animal observes the same action performed by another.

As Marco Iacoboni, a neuroscientist at the University of California at Los Angeles, explained in an interview with Scientific American: “When I see you smiling, my mirror neurons for smiling fire up, too, initiating a cascade of neural activity that evokes the feeling we typically associate with a smile. I don’t need to make any inference on what you are feeling, I

experience immediately and effortlessly (in a milder form, of course) what you are experiencing.”

This means that we don’t just identify what other people are experiencing – we actually experience it ourselves. This could be an extraordinary gift for companies trying to build their brands. By simply welcoming customers into their virtual brand world, organizations can evoke a certain feeling of belonging.

Brand building happens most powerfully on the back of experiences rather than messages. The challenge and opportunity for brand builders is to create brand experiences that enrich, engage, and involve consumers in a way that leads to loyalty beyond reason, which, like love itself, is unconditional. ////

RADAR IS A PLATFORM FOR CULTURE AND OPINION CURATED THROUGH THE LENS OF KAOSPILOTS

Charles Andrew is Senior Client Partner at Idea Couture.

KAOSPILOT IS A SCHOOL FOR CHANGE MAKERS, LEADERS AND SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS. VISIT US AT KAOSPILOT.DK

KAOSPILOTRADAR.DK

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Introducing Service Design Using Play

reinvention through play

Reinvention starts by looking inside. The inner workings of large organizations are often designed to address the complexities of yesterday, not tomorrow. Senior leaders who choose to address this daunting challenge are seen by the world as bold. But the employees impacted – the ones who deliver services to customers on a daily basis – are left fearful of what reinvention means for their customers, the business, and themselves. Play brings levity and curiosity to the process of reinventing the employee experience (EX), and, more importantly, it allows senior leaders to accelerate new models of thinking and collaboration, ultimately allowing for iterative innovation.

For a company to boldly present their reinvented self to the world, they must also use play to reset what their customers have come to expect. In doing so, they can help customers prepare for a new and improved customer experience (CX) – one that engages them in a meaningful, relevant manner.

Service design is what bridges the gap between EX and CX. It can provide the framework for organizational leaders to pursue bold new strategies for CX through reinvention of the EX. The following case studies highlight how major companies have harnessed strategic service design through play to reinvent themselves from the inside out.

Problem Solving Through Play How to Extract Creativity and Teamwork

How to shape better branded experiences b y S y d n e y K i d d a n d Z a c h e r y Om a n

Few industries exhibit the symptomatology requiring a prescription for innovation more potently than the world of biopharmaceuticals. With players across the healthcare system looking to introduce patient-centric design to their services, it’s easy to see where challenges remain. Due to the regulatory barriers they face, biopharmaceutical companies seem to lag behind other industries when it comes to serving the ever-evolving needs of healthcare practitioners and patients. With reputations on the line, eroding margins, and considerable barriers to growth, those at the helm of these organizations must challenge their “business as usual” mantras.

When these companes find their agile innovation stifled by regulatory barriers and long lead times, where can they invest in the meantime? In these red tape environments, major players are turning to other tactics to reinvent themselves.

A well-received treatment option? Reinvention through play.

The growing complexities of the healthcare industry have brought forth new expertise and functional groups within large organizations, including experts in population health, health economics, and access. This is not a new trend – medical affairs was originally folded under commercial sales, and once upon a time, legal did not play as large as a role as it may today.

The complexities of the workplace seem to hinge on a key ingredient: teamwork. This seemingly rudimentary idea encompasses how the best organizations get work done.

The companies that are able to transcend their disciplinary silos can solve problems through methodological innovation that goes beyond discipline-specific approaches. Play gives teams the opportunity to level the playing field and tackle problems rigorously through the lens of creativity.

Adobe, for example, is a leader in enabling designers to take their profession anywhere – and to any technology. As a company that builds world-class collaboration software for creatives, Adobe offers many important lessons on teamwork.

Part of what keeps Adobe nimble is Kickbox, a kit they launched for their own workforce to deploy innovation at scale. Imagine the creative power that could be unlocked within an organization if all employees were given a pre-loaded $1000 credit card accompanied with step-by-step instructions on how to disrupt the company. This is exactly what Adobe offers with Kickbox. The kit upends how innovation is found and implemented at scale; it is designed to empower employees to create, test, and validate ideas within the organization. Want to try it out? Adobe has open-sourced their kit and made it available online.

Another exemplar in this space is the neurology business at UCB, a global biopharmaceutical company. Rather than

relying on the siloed approach of the past, UCB’s Neurology Patient Value Unit organized its field leadership by creating multidisciplinary regional teams based on concentrations of patient populations. To enable these transdisciplinary teams to unlock their individual creativity and learn how to leverage their varied skill sets, UCB undertook team challenges – from conquering escape rooms to navigating re-creations of pediatric patient environments like study halls and classrooms – and they began to reward teamwork.

This created new surroundings that helped keep the teams inspired while also allowing them to be trained on new material. Play unlocked their ability to leverage each person’s strengths, and with this collective approach, they were able to bring their focus back to the patient. As Kimberly Moran, Head Catalyst, Neurology at UCB explains, “Play works as a medium to enable collaboration… simple, tangible objects disarm people to be more comfortable and honest.”

Customer Engagement Through Play How to Reinvent What Customers Have Come to Expect Typically, we restrict customers’ options to play with a brand to the world of CPG, retail, and agencies that craft B2C marketing experiences. Pop-ups like Kraft Dinner’s Fun Shop, a 2014 effort by KD which asked customers in downtown Toronto to play in order to earn “fun” as a currency to pay for products, seem to make sense for CPG. However, brands in all verticals are increasingly developing these types of activations to create play-based experiences and start the dialogue about a new product through customers’ social media channels and networks. Large-scale engagement opportunities, including conferences, have also been reimagined to harness play. A notable example is Dreamforce, an “unconference” held in 2017 by Salesforce, which featured a series of concerts and parties. With this four-day event, Salesforce managed to entirely transform customer expectations of what software conferences can be.

Medical conferences exist at the intersection of science and sales. They present a unique opportunity to bring together the community of actors behind a disease and get them to rally for the betterment of patients. They also present a platform for B2B companies to interface with their customers as a brand. Unfortunately, few pharmaceutical companies have defined the CX of conferences as a way to communicate a patient-first approach to an external audience. Patient centricity – which has taken hold across the healthcare world and promises to transform the way we practice medicine, design hospitals, and create holistic approaches to care – has not yet woven itself into the fabric of pharma.

The medical conference floor, which has even tighter restrictions than consumer tech events, may seem like the last place to find balloons, light displays, dogs, sidewalk chalk, stickers, and 3D puzzles – but at the 2017 General Meeting of the American Epilepsy Society, UCB used this venue to make a visible commitment to becoming the kind of biopharma company that could be held to a new standard of care.

Here, the big pharma company moved away from the large spinning brand signs of the past to bring forward interactive

stations; they engaged in play to create more meaningful interactions and discussions, including talks on controversial issues, such as stigma in the epilepsy community and how a ZIP code can define a patient’s access to care. These conversations were serendipitously orchestrated through the highly tactile and playful installment of a string wall (think of a peg board meets cat’s cradle) and a striking digital-era Lite Brite that users could interact with on an iPad to create light patterns. As one conference attendee reflected after the event, “This was an amazing space that engaged the five senses. It made me rethink how I treat my patients.”

Reinvention Demands Play Service Design Provides the Method To the average onlooker, the juxtaposition of a balloon canopy in a notably conservative medical conference may seem more carnival then caring. But when childish glee displayed itself across the faces of the people who interacted with UCB’s American Epilepsy Society installation and wrote their commitment to elevating care on balloons, the dawn of a new kind of “business as usual” felt imminent. It will be one where patients’ best interests are placed at the forefront of conversations concerning drug indications, and “beyond-the-pill” solutions are considered deserving of equal air time.

Organizational reinvention is a daunting task that’s reserved only for the bold. Socializing this new way of doing business to external stakeholders in a highly visible way is a no-turningback kind of strategy. With service design providing the framework for bridging and transitioning from EX to a CX, organizations can reinvent themselves and what they stand for from the inside out. In the stodgy environment of regulatory bodies, red tape, and long lead times, play has a unique opportunity to be the tool to level the playing field, create collaborative cultures, spark new ideas, and unearth important conversations. The ultimate benefactor of the efforts by those bold enough to challenge industry norms in pharma? The patients. //// Sydney Kidd is an Innovation Analyst at Idea Couture.

Zachery Oman is an Innovation Strategist at Idea Couture.

// The inner workings of large organizations are often designed to address the complexities of yesterday, not tomorrow. //

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Impactful Innovation

By Idris Mootee

John Calian is the Head of Telekom Innovation Laboratories (T-Labs), a joint organization of Deutsche Telekom and selected universities.

Additionally, he is Vice President of The Blockchain Group, a T-Labs group focused on decentralizing the blockchain enterprise. In this dual role, John is responsible for developing and leading innovation topics, including blockchain strategies and initiatives, for Deutsche Telekom and its partners.

Prior to joining T-Labs, John held numerous technology leadership roles and was the founder and COO of multiple startup software firms in the Seattle area. He holds an MBA in Technology Management from the University of Washington.

Everyone loves to talk about innovation, but few can sum it up as concisely as John Calian, Head of Berlin-based Telekom Innovation Laboratories (T-Labs). MISC’s Editor-in-Chief and resident innovation expert, Idris Mootee, digs deep into John’s views on this favorite business buzzword, unearthing how John is applying it to both the present and future through the application of innovation labs.

Idris Mootee: Every organization is setting up an innovation lab these days. Can you talk about how T-Labs is set to follow suit, and specifically about the role you expect it to play within the larger organization or as part of a larger transformational effort? Can you provide a bird’s-eye view of the transformation that is

going on within the industry in light of blockchain and other disruptive technologies?

John Calian: T-Labs’ mission is to provide impactful innovations for Deutsche Telekom, with an eye on the near future. The labs promote three key actions: disrupt, make, and connect. We bring disruptive ideas to the table, because anything is possible. We make things, rather than lecture and provide presentations; we build software. Finally, we connect our work directly to operational business units that could one day profit from our work. Overall, our goal is to deliver minimum viable products (MVPs).

Our current methodology is showcased with blockchain technology.

It is a buzzword that has very high visibility, but in our world of enterprise software and infrastructure, there are only nascent attempts to make this tech useful. We decided to move as fast as we could. Hence, we raced into this new arena in the past year, spent a few months researching, and kicked off development shortly thereafter. In February 2018, we

A Conversation With

John Calian of Telekom Innovation Laboratories

launched our first MVP in blockchain at the Bosch ConnectedExperience (BCX) hackathon to great success.

One final piece to this story is that we also promote the idea of having the “right to fail.” Without this, innovation cannot be successful.

IM: Can you talk about your organizational views about emerging technologies? What are their key applications? There aren’t many strong use cases for blockchain, but everyone believes that it can potentially disrupt almost every industry. Can you talk about some of those modernization activities and how blockchain is a part of them?

JC: To start with, it is very important to remember that blockchain, or distributed ledger technology (DLT), is just tech. By itself, it does nothing.

Our job is to determine if we can make it useful, to see if we can iterate and innovate on our current business models with the inherent features of blockchain technology.

I disagree that there are not many strong use cases for blockchain.

Quite the opposite. Nevertheless, before anyone gets into the details, it is better to take a step back and analyze the features that blockchain brings to system design. What this technology does at its essence is provide a new way to hold a data state. Moreover, that state is immutable. With this, you can then ask yourself, “Would my software system design benefit from the data being immutable?”

Blockchain also allows data to be shared by all participants. In addition, in order for any data to be written into a ledger, there must be a consensus.

So, does your system design require transparency and consensus?

For Deutsche Telekom, we are looking at very concrete applications of blockchain in the world of IoT – we are on track to manage over 50 billion devices one day – where we believe we can dramatically improve the security of our network and the communication channels between devices. Additionally, we, like most large companies, need to digitize and streamline processes, and blockchain can provide the source of trust for data between disparate, non-trusting entities.

// Promoting an atmosphere of innovation and the right to fail brings people together and allows them to spread this ideology out beyond the labs. //

IM: I want to return to the topic of the innovation lab. There are a lot of organizations that have chosen to develop innovation labs, but the jury is still out on their effectiveness. And there are many types of them. Can you talk about each type, and where T-Labs fits in? Which capabilities are you building and which are you still missing? What are the most demanding capabilities out there that most labs don’t have? And finally, what are the missteps others need to avoid in setting up innovation labs?

JC: Allow me to describe our lab, and from there you can compare it to others. Innovation is an abused word – and an elusive target. Bringing innovation to the market is difficult, especially in the corporate world, where the status quo is your competition. So, let’s start with corporate structure and support: It takes a top-down dedication to ensure that

innovation units have room to maneuver, but more importantly – and this is the key – innovation teams need room to fail. Top executives cannot judge the success of these teams based only on revenue and cost, yet this is a frequent mistake.

Conversely, innovation teams cannot operate without a connection to the operating units; they cannot operate without a notion of a return on investment.

Our team is set up to have balance between the research community and our commercially focused colleagues.

T-Labs is an An-Institut in partnership with the Technical University of Berlin.

It’s the best of both worlds. We have colleagues that solely focus on research that could be ten or more years in the future in terms of viability, and then we have our own teams taking that learning and thinking about products that are three to five years

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from seeing the light of day.

As for effectiveness, I do not know if there is one correct model. However, I do believe in and have put into practice some key features of a lab, such as building strong relationships with operational units so that the partnership exists and becomes the platform for successful innovation.

Labs cannot expect to be successful if they do not build bridges to the real world. In tandem with this is a firm grasp that labs are a part of a product and service lifecycle; they are connected to a return on investment.

Finally, it is important to remind everyone of this work years later, when the products and services are in production. Celebrate this landmark – especially with top management!

IM: How do you, in 24 months’ time, gauge the effectiveness and success of the innovation lab and ensure that it is marshaling and establishing the progress you intend?

JC: Strong partnerships and strong relationships with business units are critical to success for the labs, as previously noted. From this, it would be expected that the journey of a product or service does not end when the labs turn over their work to an operating unit. We expect to remain a part of the journey as revenues are made or costs are saved. Labs can have very tangible connections to success down the road, 24 months or 36 months or 72 months from now. In addition to this, there is a non-tangible effect. Promoting an atmosphere of innovation and the right to fail brings people together and allows them to spread this ideology out beyond the labs. From this, you have a more holistic approach to innovation, where all units in a big organization understand the role of the labs.

IM: You’re likely familiar with the concerns of Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and the University of Oxford’s Nick Bostrom around the future of artificial general intelligence.

They think it could potentially be the most dangerous innovation that has been developed by humanity.

Can you share your thoughts and make a wild prediction?

JC: AI, machine learning – these are the topics that [people claim will]

change everything in the universe.

And I do generally share the perspective that AI is the most dangerous tech. Nevertheless, from my perspective, new technology has not created an atmosphere where humans work less. In fact, I think it is the opposite in that new technologies create more complexity, rather than the opposite.

My prediction is not necessarily wild; I think the “dangerous” designation as it pertains to new technology is always overblown. As we humans create AI, we will always be balancing out its impact on society. What distinguishes humans from robots or AI is the fact that the system – however technologically advanced it may be

– is not aware of itself as a system. It is not self-reflexive. We humans are.

This is what distinguishes us and what provides a way out. I look at these predictions from the perspective of history. Scientists predicted that the speed and pressure of train travel would blow up the capacity of human lungs and make them burst. Clearly, that did not happen. I think we will continue to surprise ourselves in unpredictable ways.

However, if and when the robots take over, just remember that they don’t forget anything. Be kind to them. //// Idris Mootee is Global CEO at Idea Couture.

// Innovation is an abused word, and an elusive target. //

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Guiding Questions

Getting Playful With Palliative Care

End-of-life conversations have long been a cultural taboo.

For those with terminal illnesses, having honest, open discussions about what they want as they approach the end can be uncomfortable. These conversations force a person to confront deeply rooted fears and imagine a world where they are no longer present. Often, this topic is avoided by the dying person and their family members alike, with the conversation revolving instead around how much “fight” the patient has and how important it is to keep that fight alive.

Giving up is not an option – even for the terminally ill. Don’t let anyone down; keep accomplishing life goals; keep fighting, keep going – keep living.

The narrative of overcoming the insurmountable resonates with many, but does this ideal accurately represent everyone’s wishes about how they want to spend their last moments?

For me, having these conversations with my own aging parents meant leaning on my awkward sense of humor to keep the discussion open and, more importantly, flowing. Before I fired off questions to my mother, who is dealing with long-term complications of diabetes, about the circumstances under which she would want us to literally pull the plug, I revealed my own opinions and desires – but I smothered them in a warm smile and a recounting of funny, awkward family memories.

The conversation eventually eased and a serious discussion was had, but when moments got tense, I found myself easing the tension with jokes. End-of-life conversations don’t have to be traumatic or trivialized; they can be moments to connect and discuss deep existential feelings, and they

How can these games drastically improve the healthcare system?

How can simple innovations that are intentionally designed to spark deep conversations improve the systemic and lived experience of end-of-life care?

stressful time for both loved ones and healthcare providers.

It also places an enormous burden on the healthcare system.

End-of-life care is generally defined as the last six months of caring for individuals with terminal illnesses. During this time, treatments tend to be aggressive, and prolonged ICU stays and emergency visits become commonplace. The intensive nature of care during this time has a significant impact on the healthcare system, the family and/or network of caregivers, and the patient. And to top it all off, this period of time typically represents 25% of the overall budget for the individual’s care.

Clearly, communication is key during this stressful and important time in a patient’s care journey. So, how can healthcare practitioners facilitate a warmer, more personal conversation with their patients around end-of-life needs?

The answer may lie in designing games that stimulate these discussions.

should be times that people and their loved ones can look back on as treasured memories. We should all strive to have these conversations openly, so that they become socially acceptable, and even welcomed. The implications of these conversations not only affect people on a personal level, but they also have a far-reaching ability to dramatically improve the healthcare system.

End-of-Life Care and the Healthcare System Currently, healthcare practitioners address their patients’ end-of-life needs by actively encouraging patients and their families to create advanced care directives. This multifaceted process takes into account an individual’s values, goals, and preferences regarding sensitive end-of-life topics, like their preferred location for death, their pain-management concerns, and how long they’d like to keep receiving treatment depending on their disease progression. With this information, healthcare practitioners can effectively plan and accommodate their patients’ wishes into a care plan. Studies have shown that many patients opt for palliative care – rather than aggressive treatment – so that the objective is less about the treatment and focuses instead on maintaining a comfortable quality of life.

Though advanced directives are useful tools, they are also impersonal. Currently, the healthcare system makes it difficult for healthcare practitioners to navigate end-of-life conversations with grace. At best, these talks are fraught with awkwardness; at worst, they’re isolating, ineffective, and undervalued – if they’re had at all. This lack of forward planning can make end-of-life care a very complicated and

Facilitating Conversation Through Play

photo: idris mootee

B y K u h a n P e r a mp a l a d a s

How can games spark conversation about end-of-life decision-making?

Similar to how Cards Against Humanity can allow for topics around race and sexuality to enter into family board game night, a newly created board game called Hello has been designed to help facilitate the often-difficult conversations around end-of-life care.

Players openly discuss their answers to provocative questions regarding end-of-life issues. At any point in the game, players may give one another “Thank You” chips to show their appreciation for another player’s support or honesty. The winner is determined mostly by chance: Depending on a coin flip, the winner may be the player with the most Thank

You chips, or the player with the fewest. The purpose of the game is to encourage open discussions about topics that people seldom talk about – or, indeed, even think about themselves.

A 2016 study initially published in American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine called “Can Playing an End-of-Life Conversation Game Motivate People to Engage in Advance Care Planning?” found that players of Hello were more likely to complete advance care directives. As authors Van Scoy, Green, Reading, Scott, Chuang, and Levi report: “This study found that participants who played an end-of-life conversation game had a high frequency of performing subsequent [advance care planning] ACP behaviors and/or advanced in their readiness to do so.” In fact, people who played the game performed ACP behaviors at a high rate three months after playing. These findings suggest that Hello, and other games like it, could be a useful motivational tool.

Although this game might seem insignificant in the scheme of things, interventions that use thoughtful design and principles of play can help to save the healthcare system by enabling social and personal moments of care.

When most people think of health innovation that will change the care paradigm, new drugs, big data, and embedded sensors are usually the first things that come to mind. But sometimes, simple interventions that facilitate a more human experience can transform a cold process into a warm and impactful moment. ////

Kuhan Perampaladas is a Health Innovation Strategist at Idea Couture.

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Toying With Tech

B y C h r i s t i a n M a d s bj e r g

Since the mid-nineties, we’ve been told that the “new information economy” would give way to vast gains in productivity. If we simply implemented more enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) software – along with a slew of other systems – our companies, public services, cities, and infrastructure would be smarter and more efficient.

Whether the buzz is around IoT and big data or deep learning and AI, part of the marketing model for information technology and consumer technology has always been to spread the belief that the next big advancement is just around the corner – and that whatever it is, we humans will be supercharged by it, becoming vastly more productive as

a result. Aside from the objections of Luddites and conspiracy theorists, we seem to have an unwavering faith in relentless technological advancement.

If we want to make our businesses better, our economies stronger, and our youth more competitive, we need sleeker, smarter tech – and more of it.

We expect all companies – tech, automotive, toy, and otherwise – to constantly innovate and experiment.

But with this constant demand for progress, companies pursuing advancement are neglecting to ask two fundamental questions: “What for?” and “At whose expense?”

The notion that technological advancement is always a net positive is one that we as a society often do not question, regardless of the stakes.

Take, for example, one of our most essential and human institutions: our schools. According to the Organization

for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which tracked the relationship between math performance and access to information and communication technology in schools across several countries from 2000 to 2012, there is actually an inverse relationship between how well our kids learn math and how many computers we put in our classrooms.

The study found that in every single country, the more computers were implemented, the worse children performed. In fact, children who used pen and paper to solve math problems had higher test scores than those who used computers. In spite of this, the prevalence of computers in schools continues to grow rapidly – in the US, computer use in schools is growing faster than in any other industry, including healthcare. The Department of Education continues

photo: idris mootee

The Consequences of Playing Blindly

to tout technology as integral to student productivity, implementing new standards each year that pressure teachers to incorporate technology into the curriculum across all subjects – often without providing the tools and training to properly integrate it. The myth of tech supremacy is so pernicious, so saturated into the soil of our current reality, that we have accepted it as dogma.

Not only have we seemingly absolved tech of any wrongdoing by trusting in its innate productivity, constructiveness, and benefit, but we also do not to take it very seriously.

When Google released its ubiquitous computer headset, Google Glass, in 2013, it did so without bothering to answer a key question: Why? That it was a stunning technological accomplishment seemed to be enough for the company, who argued that the device would find its purpose eventually (by being strapped to people’s heads). When the backlash to the product went into full effect – apparently, people find interacting with someone with a computer fixed to their eyes unsettling – the tech giant seemed genuinely shocked.

Google had either not considered or had greatly underestimated the inherent intrusion of constantly capturing information, and they did not think about the significant discomfort this would produce in human interactions. They had had so much fun concocting the thing that they developed and released it without considering the sacred behavioral norms it would violate; indeed, they designed it with no regard for the important issues of human consent or privacy. The idea of an omnipresent computer seemed really cool, and the notion of strapping it to a pair of eyeglasses was almost playful. The fact that it had no discernable use case was irrelevant. This was a sophisticated new toy whose value would eventually reveal itself – or so the company thought. If the Google designers ever did stop to consider the very human violations of the product, they must have assumed its ultimate benefits would justify them.

In today’s innovation economy, it is easy to treat technology as a game.

We often play around with it for the fun of advancement, without giving

proper weight to its human consequences or to the needs it was meant to fulfill in the first place. We forget that on its own, technology has no inherent worth; instead, its value comes from the impact it has on the lives of users. Humanity should therefore be the essence of every product we produce. What if instead of simply spending billions of dollars to put computers in schools, we also invested in the materials and resources – including the teachers who work with the computers – to make this technology of actual use to students? What if rather than mindlessly incorporating the most advanced technologies into our consumer tech, we thought critically about the very human tendencies and biases embedded in their development? What if we built technologies that were meaningful extensions

of us, rather than novelties for their own sake?

Critical thinking feels almost revolutionary in the context of technological advancement, but it’s just what we need. When companies innovate, they should be considering context.

When their technologies miss the mark or fail, it should not be at the expense of human consumers. And when they develop new products, they should start by asking that most fundamental question: What human problem are we trying to solve? //// Christian Madsbjerg is a Co-founder of ReD Associates, a strategy consultancy based on the human sciences.

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Playful Purchases

// The perception of value is all about collective desire and demand.

It’s a man-made market. //

By Idris Mootee

What do fine wine, art, supercars, and cryptocurrencies all have in common? Aside from being seen (by some) as mere hobbies for the rich, they’re also all considered to be investments that are part of an alternative asset class.

The pricing of these things is often difficult to evaluate, and liquidity is not always achievable. Of course, there are exceptions – certain assets of this kind have a specific valuation, particularly when it comes to cars, but things like art and wine can be more subjective. For the producers of these items – say, for example, an artist or small winery – the value of their work can depend on the price at which their product is sold at an auction. Leaving things up to market value may not account for other factors, like cultural currency or artistic influence.

Further, some art experts claim that the market for fine art has no logic. They say that art purchases are based on purely irrational decision making and desire, and there is no anchor to specific pricing. But this is only half true. Taking a narrow and simplistic look at the economics of art is a flawed approach; it diminishes what’s really at play. Like the stock market, the fine arts market has quantitative factors affecting the value of completed works. Yet in spite of these, changes in value can still occur suddenly and unexpectedly.

In some ways, art is very much like a stock – however, some would argue that artwork, much like a Birkin bag or limitededition Porsche, is more than just an investment.

As art expert Michael Findlay wrote for Artnet in 2012, “The commercial value of art is based on collective intention-

ality to own.” Basically, human stipulation, desire to own, and declaration create and sustain the commercial value of artwork and other “luxury” products. However, many people continue to be astonished when they hear that a particular work of art has been sold for a large sum because they believe art – unlike other products of similar value – serves no necessary function. Yet many of those same people defend Bitcoin and argue that it’s undervalued. Tell me, what function is Bitcoin currently serving? At the end of the day, the perception of value is all about collective desire and demand. It’s a man-made market.

Once art reaches the secondary market, its commercial value is largely determined by supply and demand. So, who is creating the demand for artwork? To compare it to the financial world once more, galleries are essentially the investment bankers of the art world, while art critics serve as portfolio analysts. The difference is that this market is not liquid.

Fears around art and its supposed lack of value are reiterated by studies like Stanford’s “Does it Pay to Invest in Art? A Selection-corrected Returns Perspective.” According to the authors of the study, “Investors should optimally forego investing in paintings, even without considering transaction and insurance costs, and the risks of forgeries, thefts, and physical damage, unless they are able to pick winners or there is substantial non-monetary utility from owning and enjoying art.” Their research, which was based on the most complete auction database at the time, the Blouin Art Sales Index (BASI), shows the “selection-corrected annual index return is 6.5 percent, down from [the previously reported]

painting by Idris mootee Oil on canvas 2017

Is Art Ever a Smart Investment?

10 percent” for paintings sold between 1972 and 2010.

However, it is not fair to look at art this way. No one would put all of their money into purchasing artwork, but they would do this with stocks or stock funds. With artwork, you don’t need the whole portfolio to do well, just one or two pieces. Another study, “Art as an Investment and the Underperformance of Masterpieces,” by Jianping Mei and Michael Moses, found that from 1950 to 2000, American paintings yielded an average annual nominal return of 12.2%, only slightly below the average return realized by the S&P 500 during the same period, which was 12.6%. Impressionist and Old Master paintings yielded moderately lower average rates of 11.6% and 11%, respectively.

New asset class experts, whether they work with art or other collectables, need to become more sophisticated in their understanding of art markets. Each collectible under this asset class needs to be treated differently, as they all have different return rates and liquidity characteristics. It is easier to find a buyer for jewelry and watches, for example, than it is for oil paintings and antique cars. Still, vintage automobiles have actually emerged as a highly profitable asset class, yielding between 5-8%.

These passion investments have other benefits, too. After all, no one can hang their stock certificate in their dining room.

Art creates connections; it sparks conversations. Similarly, owning a supercar is a childhood dream for many; there is an emotional connection for the owner. The beauty of these pieces of art and antique cars should also be a key consideration. They evoke a sense of superiority and luxury – and these qualities are not necessarily associated with high prices.

And what about Birkin bags? According to Julia Ingall of Investopedia, “As the most sought-after bag in the world (with a seemingly eternal lifespan), the Birkin can indeed hold its value as a collectible… Any carefully or lightly used Birkin typically fetches between 80% and 120% of what the previous owner paid for it.” Ingall goes on to explain, “A Barbie-pink, crocodile-skin model, with diamond-encrusted hardware, became the most expensive purse ever sold at auction, going for $222,912 at Christie's Hong Kong in June 2015.” Today, this bag can be resold in the market for a similar price.

What if this asset class suddenly became more tradable, or if Bitcoin could be used to purchase art or jewelry and artists could be paid in Bitcoin? The presence of cryptocurrencies will likely grow in the art industry in the near-future – soon, people will be able to buy art with Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, Ripple, Litecoin, or Dash. If cryptocurrencies are used more commonly to buy art, all art transactions will be tracked with blockchain. This might even help with increasing liquidity and eventually pushing art into the mainstream as an investment class.

Experts will always have mixed feelings about whether things like art and cars are a legitimate investment, because their value is often contingent on economic conditions and other factors. However, once these products become tradable using cryptocurrencies, they will open new markets. But you still won’t be able to save for retirement with a Monet or a Maserati. //// Idris Mootee is Global CEO at Idea Couture.

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No More Time Outs How Playful Parenting is Reinventing the Parent-Child Relationship

Parenting styles have always varied. Strict or lenient, hovering or independent – regardless of which way a parent bends, by integrating elements of play into their approach, they can step up their parenting game and make the menial seem more meaningful. The future of parenting may lie in the balance of providing structure, nurture, and multi-dimensional play.

Applying the same design principles that make toys, games, and entertainment fun and engaging can also shift the paradigm of parenting. Parenting today is challenged by an inundation of media, technology, and general over-stimulation. Family members are often sucked into their own device-driven worlds.

Children are exposed to technology far earlier

than prior generations, leaving parents uncertain about how to redirect their young digital natives to other forms of engagement.

There is no precedent to this dilemma.

While it’s easy to bemoan a childhood tethered to technology, as a parent, the ultimate goal is to create a healthy, happy, educated (or “good”) person. But how is this goal possible in a fragmented world characterized by short attention spans? Just as parents ensure their children brush their teeth and eat balanced meals, so too is integrating play into their everyday lives an essential goal of parenting.

Here, we outline several design principles that we leverage in our professional lives as designers and storytellers and show how they can be applied to everyday parenting.

Design Principle #1: Engagement Through Story

photo: Daniel Cheung

By Loie Ma x well and Dan Winger

In their daily interactions and activities, parents strive to create connections and share ideas with their children. This type of connection can be facilitated through a well-crafted story.

Stories that bridge the child-parent gap are ever-present in theme park rides, like the endearing “It’s a Small World” at various Disney parks or the fully immersive 3D experience, “Transformers: the Ride,” at Universal Studios.

Through these rides, parents and children experience a shared story, one which surprises, delights, and connects them.

The use of storytelling as a tool is also everpresent in board games as simple as Candyland, where child and parent imagine themselves as characters in a sugary world, or Clue, where through role-playing, players become key actors in solving a problem. The common ground shared by the games is narrative, which establishes the path that players walk together.

Together, parents and children carry these experiential stories forward and share them for years.

At LEGO, story and role-playing are at the forefront of the development process; story ignites the imagination, while most products

involve role-playing experiences as part of the play pattern. The products inspire children to become space explorers or trainers of mythical creatures, for example, or to immerse themselves in other fantastical dreams. Sparking the imagination through play is also a tool one can use to innovate. Play gives you the license to free your thinking and open your mind to discovery.

Play through storytelling need not be complex.

Often times, storytelling can be employed to tackle boredom. Consider how children express their boredom while on long car trips. An everyday trick for tackling this boredom and inactivity while en route is to play the “...and then” game.

This is a game that requires nothing more than imagination. Parents can start the game with a sentence that begins a story. Once the parent finishes the opening thought, puts forth a character, and shares the problem or challenge this character is facing, they pass the next part of the story to the child with “...and then.”

Multiple children can play, and the story rapidly becomes silly, absurd, or even scary and thrilling. The story ends anytime the person currently speaking decides to end it. If the whole family is engaged, no one will be asking for an iPad, an Xbox, or if “we’re there yet.”

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Design Principle #2: Inject Layers of Gamification

Design Principle #3: Connected Activities

Design Principle #4: Empowerment and Meaning

Gamification is the concept of applying game elements into non-game experiences to drive motivation and engagement. Most parents have probably applied gamification to parenting before, even if they didn’t know it.

If you’ve ever tried to get multiple children out the door, you’ve probably resorted to blurting out something like this: “Last one to the car is a rotten egg!” You know what happened next: The kids instantly shifted from dawdling to a dead-sprint as they raced to the car (there may even have been a bit of shoving involved). If you’ve ever done that, congratulations! You’ve unlocked the Level 1 Parenting Gamification badge!

Since the rise of mobile devices, the number and types of gamers have increased dramatically. Nearly half of the global online population comprises active gamers – there are over 150 million gamers in the US alone. The distribution is virtually equal across genders and spans all age categories.

It can often be challenging for parents to get a child to do something they don’t want to do.

This can include everything from doing chores and homework to eating their vegetables and maintaining wellness. At times, the only solution may seem to be yelling or scolding for that short-term win, but studies have shown that this creates a negative long-term impact that can result in anxiety, decreased self-esteem, and increased aggression. Applying elements of gamification to make certain tasks fun can help parents with these moments.

When social competition is leveraged, challenges are established, and valuable rewards for completed actions are provided, children may actually want to do what their parents ask of them. There are also some tools that can help parents gamify family tasks. For example, Habitica and ChoreMonster are apps that provide incentive for kids to do the tasks their parents want them to do by offering them points that can be exchanged for real-life rewards.

As everyone becomes immersed in their devices and activities, families can become fragmented. Think, for example, of a family sitting down for dinner when everyone is on their own smartphones. Sure, they may be sharing some internet-induced laughs, but are they really present and enjoying quality family time? Connecting the dots between multiple activities and family members can lead to a singular and more immersive experience, but for parents, getting children to buy into “structured” play can be challenging. Still, quality family time is essential to overall wellbeing and connection. By making an event out of the every day, scheduling weekly or monthly activities, and even embracing the unexpected, parents can connect their family through play.

Consider, for example, the organization of a family talent show. Even the preparation for this event could incorporate play. Parents and children alike would use their arts and crafts skills to build stage props or design costumes for the event. In the evening, the family could practice a dance together, memorize their favorite Disney song, or even come up with jokes for a standup act. Later, they could build trophies out of LEGO bricks. And of course, the house would need a thorough cleaning to prepare for the big show – the kids might be excited to clean this time! All these little activities would come together for the talent show finale, during which the entire family would sing, dance, perform, and laugh together.

Using structured, connected play, parents can create greater meaning and engagement for individual activities while encouraging quality family moments – and maybe even new family traditions.

Throughout the day, kids are often told what to do – so, naturally, they hunger for greater control and ownership of their own behavior.

Returning the power to the child can help them create meaning in a way that stimulates their creative growth and independence.

The best example of this concept is the Montessori practice of learning, where children are given structure and direction, but also the freedom to make their own choices. When children can move freely through the classroom and discover their own interests – all while being given tasks and responsibilities – they develop a better awareness and understanding of their school, their fellow students, and their environment.

Minecraft takes this empowerment a step further. It provides children with their own endless world to explore and build whatever they can imagine. There is no objective, no right or wrong way of playing. The player is not only ruler of their world, but of their entire play experience. They have full control over how they choose to play. With over 100 million registered users and 74 million monthly active users, Minecraft demonstrates that there is clearly a market for activities that create empowerment and meaning.

When children are “in charge,” they can productively put their sense of power and meaning to use. Having a child keep a record of their allowance money in a specific notebook, for example, empowers them. Another method may be assigning the care of a specific plant to them. By allowing the child to care for this plant until it flowers, and encouraging them to write down the changes week by week, parents can teach the child to appreciate the effort it takes to care for a living thing while also giving them a sense of self-satisfaction. Even presenting a child with choices for their lunchbox and allowing them to choose from those options can be empowering. For children, owning their decisions – even if the choices have already been curated by the parent – is a moment of growth and ownership that fulfills their need for autonomy.

// Playful parenting is not simply about unplugging for quality time with the family, but intentionally including play to create shared experiences in everyday living. //

Congratulations: You’re Ready For Playful Parenting Motivating children to engage in daily activities can improve their creative development while bringing the whole family together. Playful parenting is not simply about unplugging for quality time with the family, but intentionally including play to create shared experiences in everyday living.

In summary, the following key ideas used in creative play and toy design can be applied to parenting: / Engaging through story is easily achieved by introducing a narrative. Whether they are on their way to school or walking the dog, when a child is engaged in role play, they can build a shared story that will spark their imagination throughout the day and provide them memories to treasure. / Gamification isn’t anything new, but it’s time to level-up. There are already apps made to incentivize children to complete mundane tasks, but parents can level it up by raising the stakes through social competition that establishes challenges and provides rewards for completed actions. / Connected play is a series of smaller activities that results in an overall ongoing experience. Activities that build up to weekly, monthly, and annual events as a family can organically inject everyday play as each family member contributes to the bigger event. Family talent shows, shopping and preparing meals, and planning an annual trip or party are opportunities for moments of connection through play. / Empowerment and meaning in play can be achieved by giving a child control to make everyday choices, even if the parent designs them. Electronic devices are so addictive because children have the power to customize their experience. Personalizing a child’s journey can not only enhance the parent-child relationship, but also spark independence and creativity.

Play will always evolve, but thoughtfully applying its principles every day can lead to a more connected and satisfying “happier when unplugged” family life. No matter how much the world around them may change, children will always thrive through purposeful – and fun – play. //// Loie Maxwell is Principal at Loie Maxwell Consulting and a former creative executive at Cartoon Network, Mattel, Target, and Starbucks.

Dan Winger is Senior Innovation Designer at The LEGO Group.

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leverage for the development of their ideas, including cloud-based web services, computer vision, code collaboration and version control, legal services, and email automation. Developers have also been mindful of how they build new platforms, employing methodologies like agile and lean startup, which alternate between designing, building, and testing products with target users in order to gather valuable feedback for the next iteration of development.

The development of products is only one stage of innovation that has been significantly altered by recent advances in technology. Access to software and the internet has enabled companies to introduce new products with zero or near-zero marginal costs. This means the cost of acquiring an additional customer is often significantly less than that in the pre-internet age. Companies can therefore leverage tactics to “hack growth” in order to bring in more users, who then interact with the product more. This has led to an unprecedented rate of growth; companies that have reached a valuation of at least $1B now take merely six years on average to get there.

In most cases, companies that grow at breakneck speeds are not motivated by malice; most express a desire to change the world for the better. However, even when an organization has the best intentions, their innovations often lead to unexpected outcomes at a systems level: Ridesharing, which was intended to reduce cars on the road, has increased their numbers in dense urban areas; social media platforms were designed to connect people, but they encourage screen time that leads to antisocial behavior, anxiety, and depression; and digital decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) were intended to democratize decision making, but they can instead become autocratic.

Cautious Play Taking a Purposeful Approach to Innovation

In 1956, President Eisenhower set in motion the largest public works program in history: the creation of the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways (also known as the Interstate Highway System).

The program was envisioned as a grand solution for addressing problems of road safety, reducing congestion, creating “arteries of commerce,” and reinforcing defense capabilities for the Cold War. Construction began following multiple rounds of consultation and design, and over the next several decades, the reach of the Interstate was continuously extended.

The Interstate did deliver on two of its main goals: lowering the cost of transportation and igniting economic growth.

However, it also introduced new indirect problems, such as urban sprawl, reductions in prime farmland, white flight and other forms of self-sorting (which caused further income inequality), and deprioritization of public transportation systems. Though the intent behind the original idea was good, there were many unexpected consequences to its development and implementation.

Today, technology companies are taking similar risks as they build products and platforms that will reshape society and the economy for decades to come, as the Interstate has done, without considering the potential human- and systems-level effects. While history shows that human intervention consistantly leads to unintended consequences, today, new ideas are being built and scaled at unprecedented volumes and speeds without regard for the risk this development presents.

Contending With Growth Today’s startups are not short on problems to investigate, nor are they struggling to find potential solutions to test.

The abundance of startups, including tech companies, is made clear by startup archivers like Crunchbase and AngelList.

The entrepreneurs leading these companies employ play – that is, the exploration and enactment of potential realities – with limited consequence. And they often have strong incentive to do so, thanks to cash-flush multinationals standing ready to acquire businesses and recombine their technology and customer portfolios.

Play has proven incredibly valuable for crafting stories of new company-created realities, which are then enthusiastically sold to investors and customers; however, concern for the potential consequences of these imagined realities is often lacking. Entrepreneurs take advantage of advice from fellow startup founders, who enthusiastically share their knowledge through forums, podcasts, videos, and articles.

Meanwhile, taking advantage of the excess liquidity in the market, venture capital firms and corporations seek profit from startups that demonstrate any sort of financial potential – irrespective of the consequences. Entrepreneurs and investors seek out market validation that, in a narrow sense, showcases “usefulness” through quantifiable metrics like user adoption, engagement, growth, and lifetime value – but the broader context of the company’s effect is left unconsidered.

Entrepreneurs and corporate R&D teams are in a lush environment for building out their ideas. There is an abundance of platforms created by giants that startups can

photo: idris mootee

By Christopher Neels

Responses While there are pronounced Neo-Luddite or techno-utopian attitudes shared among certain segments of the population, there are balanced responses emerging at the organizational, research, and policy levels to proactively prevent undesirable effects from emerging.

Organizational Apple Shareholder Activism: Two major activist Apple shareholders wrote an open letter urging the company to address issues of smartphone addiction among children and to study the effects of heavy usage on mental health.

Research OpenAI: A non-profit organization sponsored by tech industry leaders was created to guide the safe development of artificial general intelligence and ensure its benefits are as widely and evenly distributed as possible.

Extreme Risk Institute: An academic body within NYU is developing new approaches to confronting actions and policies that carry uncertain risks that could cause systemic or extraordinary harm to society.

Deep Lab: A congress of cyberfeminist researchers was founded to conduct critical assessments on how privacy, security, surveillance, anonymity, and large-scale aggregation are problematized in the arts, culture, and society.

Policy Synthetic Biology Roadmap for the UK: A multidisciplinary group representing industry, academia, government organizations, and funders came together to produce a roadmap for the responsible formation of the synthetic biology sector in the UK. UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons: Representatives from nations around the world are actively campaigning to place a global ban on the development and utilization of automated weapons.

The great British cybernetics pioneer Stafford Beer once said, “The purpose of a system is what it does.” Instead of equating technology with progress, we should be critical of ideas that have been created, purposeful about ideas that could be created, and mindful about ideas that we are creating. //// Christopher Neels is an Innovation Strategist at Idea Couture.

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world of workcraft

Learning Real-Life Skills From Role-Playing Games

By Ian Foster

Marconius, a level 18 paladin, chips away at a vein of iron ore in a fantastical forest. The gamer, Marc, wonders to himself, “Why am I doing these repetitive tasks? Is there any point to this?” In real life, Marc is an accountant.

On most days, he sits in his cubicle and works through piles of financial data, wondering much the same thing as when he’s living his paladin life – what is the point?

The point, in both cases, is the skills and lessons Marc learns.

Many people view playing video games as a waste of time – especially role-playing games (RPGs), as they demand a larger investment of time and effort. However, there is more to these games than meets the eye. Dr. David Whitebread, of the University of Cambridge, believes that the experience of playing has been an important characteristic of human evolution. Play is

practice for real life; we play games in environments that have rules and boundaries to learn what type of behavior results in success.

However, when we see children running around in a playground, we think they’re just being kids – not that they are fine-tuning their motor skills, spatial awareness, and creative aptitude.

What, then, can be said about an adult’s version of a virtual playground – for example, playing RPGs? First, let’s define this type of gaming. RPGs are a subgenre of video games that have gamers assume the role of a central character or hero within a fictionalized virtual world.

They are characterized by the underlying principle that in order for the game to be won, the gamer needs to develop their character by gaining “experience.” This principle is analogous to that of real-life work experience; we are (presumably) rewarded for the amount of time and effort we put into our work.

This analogy, while interesting, doesn’t really tell us much. To learn something from it, we have to look at the process of gaining experience in RPGs and discover its relevance to the real working world.

Let’s look at three common gameplay elements from RPGs and their parallels to our everyday work lives. We might learn something new – or maybe even change some of our perceptions about work.

Grinding

Teaming

Grinding is an important aspect of RPGs that has been utilized for decades. This term refers to characters completing repetitive tasks or actions to acquire materials for growth-related purposes. For instance, if a character wanted to craft a steel weapon, they would need to find the right materials: metals to be smelted, wood and leather for the handle, and so on.

These materials often don’t come easily – they need to be acquired by defeating enemies carrying such items, or by exploring a dungeon where they may be harvested, for just a couple examples. You may need a certain amount of a certain material, meaning that multiple enemies need to be defeated, while other items might be exceedingly rare.

The interesting point about grinding, though, is that it usually isn’t necessary for actually completing the storyline. Your perseverance, however, can yield beneficial results that make the game more enjoyable. With better weapons, you can kill enemies faster and defeat optional superbosses – if for nothing more than bragging rights and glory.

While work may not consist of crafting your own swords, it does undoubtedly involve activities that are repetitive and monotonous.

Most of the time, we are quick to complain about how these tasks have no benefit to our development. But what if we’re wrong?

Maybe we’re just looking at grinding at work the wrong way. What if we viewed it as a manifestation of our work ethic or a chance to flex our perseverance and hone certain skills, like concentration? And what if we acknowledged that repetition is necessary when it comes to becoming an expert at something?

Perhaps then, when faced with laborious tasks, we could revel at our tenacity for “grinding it out,” much like gamers do.

Many RPGs are played within online environments with other players. These online virtual worlds (or massively multiplayer online role-playing games – MMORPGs) are actually complex social environments comprising thousands of different types of players.

Structured within MMORPGs are tasks, usually called quests, which need to be completed by groups of players. Central to these quests being performed effectively is the assignment of “roles” to different players, based on their character type. Healers ensure other party members don’t die in combat, and tanks are strongly armored heavy hitters that take the bulk of hits from opponents, while archers can inflict damage from a safer position.

While roles vary from game to game, their importance is the same: In order for the team to be successful, each player must perform their individual role. If you fail in your role, the team fails. While the value of teamwork is clearly important in the workplace, what RPGs teach us is that, sometimes, not all roles get the same public recognition. A healer usually doesn’t receive the same positive feedback as a tank does because, optically, the tank was the center of attention. While the success of the group is the sum of its parts, a single presence isn’t always noticed – but the absence most certainly would be, as it would if a healer failed to keep the tank from falling in battle.

Even though team cohesion is important, not all contributions are that obvious. Sometimes, it’s important to let go of the need for recognition to serve the greater good. In the workplace, this is very common in situations where managers get all the credit for the success of a group they manage. As a team member, it is important to know that, in spite of your recognition (or lack thereof), your efforts were integral to the win.

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Leveling Up

Time to Play

Gaining levels is central to progressing in an RPG. By gaining experience, your character becomes stronger, but the game also gets harder. The more you play the game, the better you become at it, and your experience culminates to prepare you for new challenges and the acquisition of new skills. Interwoven into the narrative of RPGs is the idea that the character isn’t expected to be a hero when they start the game, but over time they evolve into such a character. Most senior leaders would agree with this; their careers are a manifestation of their previous successes, but as they have ascended in stature, their job has gotten harder and they have required new skills in order to be successful.

Psychologist Dr. Joseph L. Henderson believed that the hero myth is deeply rooted in human psychology, and that pride is an inherent obstacle to human progress. The common saying “pride comes before the fall” refers to the hero becoming too confident in their ability, resulting in their fallibility. This relates particularly well to RPGs because, regardless of how you may perceive your own ability, the game will quickly let you know whether or not your character is ready to progress. If you try to take on a monster before you’re ready, you will surely pay the price with that dreaded “game over” screen.

Likewise, the working world also lets you know when you’re not ready to take something on. The problem is, sometimes we are offered a project or promotion that we aren’t ready for – but we very seldom turn it down. The lesson we can take away from RPGs is the need for critical self-assessment in order to understand if we are “strong enough” to take on a new and tempting challenge, especially when failure could be career suicide. While a superior or organization may think you’re ready, you know yourself best – and sometimes it’s better to acknowledge that you need to keep leveling up before you’re ready to fight.

Dr. Bowen F. White, a founding board member of the National Institute for Play, believes that play is “deeply engrained in our evolutionary drive to survive.” Our ability to play is not an evolutionary accident; it’s critical to our development. Psychologist Dr. Anthony D. Pellegrini has concluded that playing instead of working enables individuals to focus on means instead of ends. In other words, we focus better on what we can learn when we are playing.

RPGs offer us expansive virtual worlds to learn from. By engaging in these magical worlds, we can make better sense of the many roles we play within our everyday lives. It’s time to dust off that controller and get ready for the grind. //// Ian Foster is an Innovation Strategist at Idea Couture.

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Play is the watchword. Synonymous with freedom and creativity, it’s heralded as a savior across domains as diverse as business, education, and retirement.

We’re told that the solution to many of our most pressing problems is play, and that the problems themselves stem from a lack thereof.

s businesses, individuals, and members of society at large, we have lost our sense of childhood spontaneity and wonder, our ability to joyfully leap into challenges, and our determination to experiment and tinker our way out of those challenges – or so the story goes.

BY—

You could call it “Playism.”

LAURA DEMPSEY JAMIE FERGUSON VALDIS SILINS

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JEMUEL DATILES

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It’s no surprise, then, that in our current period of upheaval, we find ourselves called to play as adults. Data economies and their demands for our attention and connectivity; the uneven impacts of globalization and politically polarized responses to it; rapid scientific and medical advances like gene editing; gender politics and social unrest – these are just a sample of the forces reshaping our world. Our age is in a transition between settled horizons. To get to the next stage, we must reset assumptions that may no longer hold in our changing world – and what better way to do this than through play?

We might play because we feel compelled to, because a game or trigger has been placed in front of us and we are pulled in by the structure and rules of it. This is PLAY AS PROCEDURE. Most attempts at gamification fall into this reduction of play to a structure of progressive levels and linear feedback, and most corporate “play” goes no further.

But play can also be driven by our need and desire for expression. By playing with gender, fashion, and even body modification, we are using PLAY AS EXPRESSION to search for and build our identities and share them with the world.

We can use play to create something entirely unexpected – something new, something that we may or may not even understand the workings of. When we use PLAY AS CREATION, the thing we create can never be unmade.

Finally, play can even focus on the very laws and structures of the external world. This is PLAY AS DISCOVERY. It is about pushing the boundaries, as children often do, simply to see what happens. If I do this, then that will happen. But what if I do that instead?

ILLUSTRATION: JEMUEL DATILES

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But our devotion to play is not unfounded – after all, play can often get us out of a tight spot. Associated with childhood, play is a youthful affair. We play to discover the patterns and rules of a new environment and our role in it. Our species might be naturally suited to play; after all, humans have a long period of childhood development, much longer than other animals. By staying in childhood longer, we gain a distinct competitive advantage: the freedom to play longer and therefore adapt to a variety of environments and niches more readily than other creatures.

The prisms of play we outline here frame a deeper understanding of the notion of play that goes beyond the facile conflation of play with creativity. Play is multifaceted and double-edged; it is risky, but necessary for adaptation and change. Here, we explore the different ways we use play and how these methods may come to shape our world in the future. Each scenario includes signals – changes happening today that exist on the fringes of mainstream life, but that have the potential to develop into highly impactful trends – as well as broader drivers of current change. Finally, we include surreal illustrations of future products, services, or business models that could develop if these hypothetical worlds were to take shape. By exploring these prisms and seeking to understand today’s uncertainties, we can gain the perspective we need to challenge the rules of tomorrow’s game, today.

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PROCEDURE When play is simply the execution of a set of rules, it becomes procedural.

The possibilities for the act of play shrink, while the consistency of their outcomes grows. The rules of the game, which the player learns and masters over time, become the reason for playing. From a child coloring inside the lines to an adult matching gems in Candy Crush, play as procedure is a way to pass time and master the rules of a context. But what happens when society as a whole is mobilized and compelled to play 24/7?

Over the last few decades, the boundaries between leisure and work have become blurred. Cognitive capitalism and the knowledge economy have placed a greater demand on businesses to generate information-based offerings, and employees are feeling the pressure to keep up. Because we feel the need to constantly learn about new tools and techniques, we fill our spare time with learning. We complete micro-courses, collect badges, and earn belts, and we do so by participating in gamified learning experiences.

Back at the workplace, we try to put our newly learned skills to use; however, we soon find that their application demands creative execution. It’s not enough to just apply our skills – we need to do it creatively. And so, with our workday hours already filled and our devotion to learning already occupying much of our lives, we turn to our leisure time and seek sources of insight and inspiration. A book, a film, an article, a passing observation in a park – anything could lead to a breakthrough insight. We make our leisure more productive, and the boundary between it and work time blurs.

This pressure to be productive is intensified by our consumption of products and services, as well as the business models driving them. A whole slew of tricks have popped up to encourage our constant interaction and engagement with products and companies, including behavioral nudges like intermittent rewards to flood us with a rush of dopamine and algorithms that select content to maximize its effect on our feelings. Our “Society of the Spectacle,” as named by French theorist Guy Debord in the 1960s, has morphed into a “Society of the Interaction.” More and more time of our time is cannibalized to increase the velocity of our interaction, as we build a world where every individual is continuously interfacing. As Netflix CEO Reed Hastings puts it, their only real competitor is sleep.

The fun of play is being replaced by obligation, and this procedural play is slowly collapsing the distinctions between work and life. Every day, work becomes more leisure-like, while leisure becomes more work-like.

SIGNALS

GAME-FULLY EMPLOYED A 2017 study by Princeton economists found that for every decrease in hours young men spent working over the last decade, their time spent playing video games rose by the same amount.

PAID TO STARE Gaze Coin is monetizing augmented reality (AR) and VR using eye-tracking technology and blockchain tokens. By basing advertising value on the amount of time consumers spend looking at content, Gaze Coin can help brands evaluate their designs, ads, customer experiences, and targeting efforts.

DRIVERS

ATTENTION ECONOMY

fig. 01— “Productive Dreamworking”

ILLUSTRATION: JEMUEL DATILES

The extraordinary growth in computing power, data capture and analysis, and business models based on free content have created an arm’s race to capture a psychological commodity that, by definition, remains scarce.

fig. 01— “Productive Dreamworking” Speculative Future Worldview: In this future, the boundaries between leisure and work have totally blurred. Work has been gamified, and leisure has been structured to generate value for companies.

The Product: Imagine a night-time gaming system that induces lucidity in the wearer, allowing them to perform creative tasks while in a dream state. Every night’s sleep is an opportunity to boost your pay check.

“PLAYBOR” SOCIETY Techniques to generate value from underutilized leisure time, along with social desires to make work more enjoyable and meaningful, have interacted in ways that have collapsed the distinction between work and leisure.

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When boundaries are blurred, new conditions for playful expression are created – ones that enable choice, openness, and fluidity. As James P. Carse notes in Finite and Infinite Games, in an infinite game – where the overall purpose is not to win, but to continue playing – rules and strict confines give way to “a progressive work of unveiling.” That is, instead of playing within boundaries, we play with them.

And playing with those boundaries is becoming increasingly commonplace.

Take gender, for example. Until recently, the options available to us fell into two neat boxes. But young people are increasingly questioning the idea of gender as a binary distinction ascertained at birth; in a 2015 telephone survey conducted in the US on behalf of Fusion, half of 18-34 year olds expressed a belief that gender exists on a spectrum. More and more, gender is being thought of as a choice.

The boundaries between male and female are not the only ones being questioned and changed: the borders between species have also been revealed to be fuzzier than we once imagined. This is revolutionizing the way we understand life. We’ve learned, for example, that forests are connected via the symbiotic “wood wide web” of mycorrhizal fungal networks, coral reefs are made up of a vast ecosystem of symbiotic microbial communities, and even the human body relies upon a whole host of bacteria to properly function, Our newfound understanding of life’s blurry biological constitution has occurred alongside an increasing ability to manipulate it. Advancements in synthetic biology and genetic engineering are offering new capabilities to hack (and play with) the body’s genome, from genomics firms investing in animal modification experiments to individuals using frighteningly simple DIY procedures to modify their own DNA using CRISPR gene-editing techniques. Though self-expression was once the domain of the arts, fashion, and bodily adornment, biohacking can take modification far beyond surface level. If the rules of the game have dissolved, so too have the limits for what life might become.

This could have interesting implications for companies. Though modifying life to achieve particular forms of commodified expression surely falls into an ethical grey area, it is not difficult to imagine companies using synthetic biology to create living expressions of their brands. Imagine, for example, if Disney could bridge the gap between their imagined worlds and reality by creating customized CRISPR pets that mimic the features of a beloved animated character.

In a world where categorizations and boundaries have been made indistinct, a tension is emerging between Modern ideas of progress toward a universal truth, and Postmodern fluidity with no target endpoint. It is, in a sense, a classic trade-off between freedom and stability. For those who take pleasure in these blurred boundaries, this world is truly a playground, but for those embracing social scripts while seeking to understand the truth of who they are, this fluidity can be frightening and unmooring. How can we truly know ourselves or others when it’s so easy to change who – and what – we are? fig. 02— “My Dream Pet” Speculative Future Worldview: This future features extensive advancements in gene editing, and people are now comfortable using CRISPR/Cas9 to customize the traits of their pets to suit their preferences. In this world, companies take advantage of these new possibilities to create living expressions of their brands.

The Product: Imagine watching a movie like Alice in Wonderland and falling in love with the Cheshire Cat character. Instead of heading to the toy store to buy a stuffed animal of his likeness, you can get a kitten that looks just like him. And it doesn’t just have to be existing characters – any pet you can imagine, you can create.

SIGNALS

DEFINITELY INDEFINITE A small study completed by Uppsala University in Sweden found that children who attend gender-neutral kindergartens are less likely to be influenced by societally conditioned gender stereotypes compared to children enrolled at traditional pre-schools. The gender-neutral pronoun “hen” was officially added to the Swedish dictionary in 2015 and is commonly used by many Swedes.

BACKYARD BIOHACKING David Ishee, Mississippi-based dog breeder and biohacker, is attempting to reverse the genetic disorders caused by the selective breeding of purebred canines by incorporating DIY gene-editing techniques into the breeding process.

DRIVERS

SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY Advancements in synthetic biology have occurred at such a rapid pace that widespread deliberation about the ethics of gene editing has struggled to keep up, and lawmakers have grappled with addressing the open-source nature of the technologies.

POSTMODERN IDEOLOGY With its focus on subjective experience and rejection of the concept of objective natural reality, Postmodernism has taken new forms on both sides of the political spectrum, from “fake news” to identity politics.

ILLUSTRATION: JEMUEL DATILES

EXPRESSION

fig. 02— “My Dream Pet”

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SIGNALS

CREATION Creativity is about becoming sensitive to problems, disharmonies, and gaps in knowledge; searching for solutions and making guesses; testing and modifying hypotheses; and communicating the results of this labor to others. In today’s world – which is largely characterized by our exhaustion of finite resources, an outdated model of exponential growth, and the stagnation of existing ideas surrounding intellectual property – it is becoming increasingly necessary to find new ways of creative thinking and challenging traditional modes.

Using play, we can come up with new and valuable ways of thinking and making in the world. Here, play is not a separate activity with its own set of rules – it is an ongoing creative process that we use as part of our daily lives to enhance our adaptability, to learn, and to promote improvisation and a sense of purpose.

The idea of creativity as we understand it today emerged alongside humanism during the Renaissance. For the first time, achievement and intellect were valued over dogma, and individual creativity was understood not as a conduit for the divine, but as the result of abilities that had been cultivated through broad education. Today, a new version of the polymath is reflected in transdisciplinary research as individuals from different specialties engage in combinatory play.

This approach prioritizes the ability to make connections that help remove the boundaries to creative thinking and problem solving.

A semantic economy has emerged from this growth of transdisciplinary thought, in which information is accessible to all, everything connects, and the businesses gaining a competitive advantage are those creating new informational value for the entire ecosystem – not those who best reduce costs and leverage assets for themselves. Individuals with similar interests from different backgrounds are coming together in order to create solutions for complex issues. In this sense, our shared problems are acting as unifiers, with these challenges quickly becoming the new medium for multidisciplinary collaboration. Small and large entities alike can now experiment across researcher domains, and this cross-pollination of disciplines is accelerating scientific and design processes.

Rooted in creativity, free play and experimentation support the research-creation approaches that link interpretive and creative disciplines. The maker movement has defined the notion of always being in beta – that is, it encourages a process of incremental development and utilizes nimble distributed manufacturing – and it encourages playing, tinkering, and hacking as a process for creation in and of itself.

fig. 03— “Our Creation”

ILLUSTRATION: JEMUEL DATILES

Together, these emerging elements place an emphasis on creative thinkers and makers who take time to play and create new ways of thinking and doing. As people increasingly seek out a balance between creative exploration, meaningful projects, and community, everyday life could become a space for play that can provide new concepts for meaningful growth.

fig. 03— “Our Creation” Speculative Future Worldview: In this future, the concept of infinite economic growth falls out of fashion as resource scarcity becomes critical. The practice of recirculating inputs for zero waste gains popularity, and consumerism is gradually replaced with a culture of repurposing, recycling, and reclaiming.

The Product: A new type of organization emerges to capitalize on new ideas around the sharing of intellectual property. Imagine a fabrication laboratory (“fab lab”) in which all materials are recycled and ideas are stretched and reused to maximize their usefulness.

THE GAMBIARRA MOVEMENT Spanning the fields of art, design, electronics, and more, Gambiologia is the art of repurposing, recycling, and reclaiming.

More than just a demonstration of resourcefulness, it is also a political and ethical gesture. It questions industrial processes and mechanisms, rejects consumerism, and postulates the need for greater personal and societal autonomy.

SAFECAST The Safecast project in Japan has pulled together hackers, crowd volunteers, and business resources to determine how best to build radiation-monitoring equipment, attach the equipment to cars, and monitor radiation levels in the wake of Fukushima.

DRIVERS

CIRCULAR ECONOMY Circularity focuses on minimizing inputs, emissions, and waste by recirculating and regenerating inputs while encouraging system-wide innovation and mutually beneficial sharing networks.

SHANZHAI MODEL In Chinese popular culture, a Shanzhai (shan: mountain, zhai: stronghold) refers to a remote village in the mountains where bandits once recreated their own form of society. The term gained popularity with the rise of counterfeit product production.

Shanzhai factories were small production units, originally run by families who shared plans, news, retro-engineering results, and blueprints with others via instant messaging groups. Despite not having a promotional label like “open-source,” they became practitioners of distributed manufacturing.

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DISCOVERY When it is used for discovery, play is about uncovering the connections in a given domain – it’s about exploring how something works and what it contains. Think of a child playing with a console to determine which button does what. We can use play to discover uncharted territory or remap assumed connections; it bestows on us the gradual ability to control our surrounding world by understanding the causal connections between its constituent parts.

If play is key to discovery, can we use it to uncover a new political system that better serves our needs?

The past five years have been devastating to presumptions around political stability – though it’s not quite clear why. Some people point to growing inequality as a root cause for this shift, while others argue that inequality matters little as long as the absolute wealth of the nation grows. Others lay the blame on digital culture, vilifying in particular the rise of social media, business models that monetize attention, and “fake news” vectors. Still others believe that celebrity visions of democracy, which have been unleashed by an unchecked and over-valorized consumerism, have torn apart the political fabric of our society. The left-right axis, previously relatively easy to demarcate, has become confused. While the causes are debated, few can ignore the gaping tear in what many assumed was a stable and permanent political system.

Into that void have flooded a number of players with ideas for addressing the innumerable problems we currently face. Some envision a liquid democracy, where citizens would be consulted and polled on a regular, even real-time basis. Others imagine neo-reactionary models in which city-states work to recruit the ideal inhabitants. Both concepts, though they stem from widely disparate perspectives, address issues of government accountability and responsiveness. What if there really were more effective ways to discover what worked best in policy and governance? Could we, through iteration, discover new models and prescriptions for how, say, marginal tax rates impact effort and motivation? Could we turn politics into a real-world lab? And who might fund such an experiment?

ILLUSTRATION: JEMUEL DATILES

New tech players have harnessed network effects and near-zero marginal costs to grow at unprecedented speeds while maintaining the quick, iterative mentalities of their startup days. Now, with piles of cash on hand and irons in multiple fires, many of these giants have inched into political terrain.

Amazon’s open bid for its second headquarters has pitted city against city; Google has forayed into local politics with Sidewalk Labs, a city-building initiative, and its equally ambitious Jigsaw, a geopolitical think-tank; and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg sought public approval and exposure with his 2017 photo-op tour of the US and hiring of an internal pollster. Many important players are eyeing just how to interact with, and potentially help shape, the politics of the future. fig. 04— “A City of Our Own” Speculative Future Worldview: In this future, political unrest has led to alternative forms of governance and ways of living. Trail-blazing adventurers have adopted the idea of “steading”: living on “artificial” floating islands that fall outside of any government’s sovereignty. Startup colonies compete to attract new immigrants to stay, test out, and iterate the rules of their new societies. fig. 04— “A City of Our Own”

The Product: A large corporation has sponsored a “stead” and is inviting adventurous consumers to test out new ideas and parameters for this particular settlement.

It’s Google meets Singapore – and they’re looking for citizens like you.

SIGNALS

SEASTEADING EXPERIMENTS The idea of developing seasteads – autonomous floating cities at sea – is gaining popularity. In 2017, the French Polynesian government signed an agreement to create a special governing framework and economic zone for the development of a seasteading project.

LIQUID DEMOCRACY Pol.is is an open-source, AI-driven platform for participatory democracy that enables the flexible design of systems for voting and delegation. It was most famously used in Taiwan after the Sunflower Movement occupied parliament in 2014.

DRIVERS

POLITICAL INSTABILITY Populist forces have been rising across the developed world, fed by rising economic inequality, changing migration patterns, and a collapse of trust in institutions, including government, media, business, and NGOs.

GAFANOMICS A modern, networked, economic system has been spurred by Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple (GAFA), but it also encompasses “unicorns” (startups worth over $1B), Chinese tech giants, and all other companies changing our lives through computer technology.

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The different manifestations of play matter when we want to think beyond play as a blindly positive force. Rather than a fountain for creativity – a juvenescent spring that kindles minds parched by years of business indoctrination – play is manifold.

It can be a way to inculcate new habits, binding us to procedure through repetition and compulsion. By playing with the boundaries of labels and categories to see what new combinations lead to, we can find unique ways of expressing ourselves. Play can also be a way to create entirely new possibilities as we find unexpected resonance and connection across disciplines, materials, and ways of tinkering. Finally, we can use play to discover the ways things work as we look for the causal connections between objects and systems to iteratively decipher their functions.

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When confronted by changes in our environment, we have a few options: We can turn away in fear or anxiety, we can ignore the changes and hope business as usual will get us through the next quarter, or we can face the uncertainties head on to start making sense of what’s different. Play can help us make sense of this uncertainty; it is an open-ended process, and with it, we can explore and understand the many possibilities for our future.

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Today, with uncertainty surrounding how we will continue to monetize attention, tinker with our genes, move past infinite growth to build more from less, and structure our political systems, it is easy to feel trapped between horizons in multiple domains. Of course, these are only some of the many interlocking, complex changes we will continue to face moving forward. By embracing the challenges of today with a play-driven mindset, we can gain a sense of how to transition to the next phase. With this understanding, we can begin to answer a daunting question: Where do we go from here?

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NOW OPEN

Laura Dempsey, Jamie Ferguson, and Valdis Silins are Foresight Strategists at Idea Couture.

ILLUSTRATION: JEMUEL DATILES

at Winnipeg Richardson International Airport

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The Playful Design Game Begins This shift is already taking form. A recent example is a new offering from Robinhood, an app that made headlines for being a simply designed stock-trading service that didn’t charge a commission. Recently, they introduced the ability to invest in cryptocurrencies, also commission free. The service, called Robinhood Crypto, has its own website complete with screenshots of the app – and both look as if they were inspired by the aesthetics of Disney’s film Tron.

Block, sci-fi, 1980s typography leads the graphic direction, paired with bright violet neon grids. It’s a design that almost mocks itself; it highlights (and even flaunts) the new, emergent nature of cryptocurrencies while also echoing the “underground” aspects of this technology. Robinhood’s regular trading app is more pared down: its features include clean lines, modern typography, lots of whitespace, and green – to represent money – as the dominant color.

Robinhood Crypto throws that all away for a much more playful and bizarre aesthetic. When trust is built into the system, the design is free to play up other attributes.

As design in finance is given room to grow beyond engendering trust, how could the design of money itself change? There are endless possibilities. For example, one day, the type of money you have could symbolize your wealth, social status, or other characteristics. There could even be a type of cryptocurrency used by creative types and despised by Wall Street folks. This isn’t a wild idea; plastic money is already being given added qualities, whether tangible or intangible.

The Chase Sapphire Reserve card is an extremely popular credit card because of its perks, which include 100,000 points on signing, three times the points on travel and dining, access to airport lounges, and more. The card costs $450.

What’s most interesting is that the card has what’s known as the “plunk factor,” a design characteristic taken from one of Chase’s other premium cards. To achieve this effect, a metal core is placed between the plastic to give the card a thunk as the owner places it on the table or counter. This card design costs five to ten times more to produce. It’s a smart yet simple design play. Plastic money is a removed symbol, a mere simulacra for real money, but here, in a wicked design trick, Chase gives back the sensation of wealth through the weight of the card. Placing the card on a table harks back to the heft of a suitcase full of dollar bills.

Getting Crypto-Chic

By Yehezkel Lipinsky

Design in finance isn’t trendy. It rarely embraces risk, fads, or even asymmetry. Design that has anything to do with money or the economy is the design of integrity. Whether it’s for a bank logo or the dollar bills in our pocket, the goal of this design is to articulate trust – something that becomes even more important as money itself becomes a concept rather than a tangible thing with more static value.

In 2011, the popular radio show This American Life released an episode called “The Invention of Money.” Their description for it is telling: “Five reporters stumbled on what seems like a basic question: What is money? The unsettling answer they found: Money is fiction.” When it comes to money, design is therefore the creation of literal props: artifacts that give physicality to a system we can’t touch and that makes little sense beyond the value we give it. With our current system, design is the glue binding our collective trust in

our modern economy. When our bank accounts are displayed online on a website that looks “corporate” and the cash we hand over to the barista at a coffee shop appears “timeless,” things seems right. Heck, they can be trusted.

But money is entering a new era; with cryptocurrency and the blockchain technology behind it, trust is designed into the system itself. Trust is decentralized to a series of computers powered by rigorous code that maintains the rules of the system. It exists as a network – it goes beyond any one corporation, law, nationalistic policy, or personal promise. Having trust built into the system removes the need to manufacture it using design; in other words, the design of financial things can embrace an array of aesthetic sensibilities it never has before. Finance can be playful and glamorous, clairvoyant and camp. When an understanding around the trust that comes baked into the code of the blockchain becomes more widespread, our economy will no longer need design to be its face.

photo: idris mootee

The Playful Design Futures of Cryptocurrencies

Democratizing the Future of Finance

Once it is free to do more than just build trust, the question of design’s best use in finance will come to the forefront.

Being fun and fanciful might be useful for early adoption, yet it will easily become noise later on. What happens when today’s emergent digital currencies and processes move beyond the fringe and into the mainstream? How could design be best used to support this growth?

Right now, financial markets are illegible. Art theorist Sven Lütticken describes an entrepreneur and novelist, Ernst-Wilhelm Händler, who “diagnosed the Occupy protests as a ‘revolt against abstraction’” in the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit. Today’s systems of finance are opaque and tricky to grasp. They’re often refracted through multiple institutions and obscured through layers of intangibility.

In the same article, Lütticken later quotes Zachary Formwalt’s book, Reading the Economist: “The invisibility of the instruments of exchange was measure of their efficiency; the less visible, the more efficient they were in the circulation of capital.”

Future design in finance needs to mimic the technological breakthroughs that will make the next economy possible: It needs to finally make finance legible. Just like the blockchain creates a shared ledger that anyone can access and read, yet no one entity owns, the next era of design in finance needs to be focused on making our next economy tangible and accessible for everyone; it must be something we can all interpret and utilize for our wellbeing.

Instead of creating trust as a mere label, design can use a broader toolkit of visual meanings to make finance’s future something we can all partake in. Adding play into financial design might be the next step – this may be the best way to build a system with rules we can all understand. Now that would be chic. //// Yehezkel Lipinsky is a Senior Foresight and Innovation Analyst at Idea Couture.

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Fostering Creative Conditions As a manager in drug development, one of my most important responsibilities has been creating conditions for employees and their teams to succeed. In this role, I have often asked myself whether there is a good way to foster creativity. Can allowing “playtime” or building an “idea sandbox” lead to the development of more successful drugs?

The desire for more playtime may be driven by something other than fueling inquisitive scientific minds. Instead, its motivations may lie in the plethora of administrative tasks scientists must complete on a daily basis. These tasks are often burdensome to scientists’ productivity and morale.

For example, employee-wide training programs can be unquestionably necessary, yet they are often cumbersome.

Here, it should be the responsibility of management to ensure that some vendor does not sell the human resources department a two-day training program for two hours of true content. Creativity can also be more easily fostered when a workplace centers on employee-centric policies. Years ago, for example, I had access to a wonderful gym through my employer. However, my lab responsibilities were not conducive to the hours of operation. Management listened and staffed the center so that employees could exercise as their work schedules allowed. This not only contributed positively to employees’ physical and mental health, but it also boosted morale across the organization. Giving employees more control over their workday often has this type of positive effect.

Basic opportunities to explore and “play” also exist right under our noses. Even things that seem small can do a lot to

Drug Discovery and the Notion of “Laboratory Playtime”

Drug development depends on rigorous intellectual activity and research. Considering the process-focused nature of scientific discovery, some in the pharmaceutical industry have questioned whether giving scientists “free time” would improve their ability to uncover new pathways in the quest for new medicines. Could allowing more “play time” in the busy days of pharmaceutical laboratory scientists result in more drugs, or perhaps better drugs?

The answer to this recurring question, unfortunately, is most probably not. When asked about the possibility of incorporating play into the rigorous process of discovery and development, the industry leaders I spoke to said they did not see direct value in doing so. For most scientists, who are naturally inquisitive, having one afternoon a week (or perhaps a day or two a month) dedicated to free exploration is unlikely to bear fruit.

Rather than providing time for “play” in the lab, it may be more prudent for pharmaceutical companies to ensure their laboratory scientists understand the company’s research goals and strategy in the overall context of the organization’s success (i.e. its “organizational effectiveness”). In a 2016 article for Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, Tollman, Panier, Dosik, Biondi, and Cuss explain the virtues of having mobility of talent across functional boundaries, as this enhances performance. In other words, it may be possible to increase research productivity outside of the strict domain of scientific research.

Finding the Right Players in Pharma The natural creativity of the research scientist is a dimension – or, in human resources terms, a “competency” – that, while important, is difficult to manage. There are endless tasks to complete in every drug-development program.

There are compounds to screen, supplies to order, instruments to calibrate, and laboratory reports to finalize. Laboratory scientists also feel a great amount of pressure to provide proofs of concept or to optimize dose selection before certain deadlines; sticking to strict timelines is of paramount importance in drug development, as there is always a multidisciplinary team watching and waiting for the next milestone.

A good scientist accomplishes these tasks while also remaining inquisitive and on the hunt for new inspiration. To operate in the complex and expensive pharmaceutical industry, researchers must also have the business acumen to know which ideas are worth pursuing and which resources worth fighting for. In other words, the best players in this industry are those who maintain their ability to thrive scientifically within a system driven by profit and loss. They will apply their expertise to the overall good of the organization, as opposed to a specific interim goal.

photo: idris mootee

B y D r. T e d W i t e k

support employee productivity and creativity. For example, as a manager, I often allow scientists to attend commercial strategy meetings as guests. This gives them an opportunity to learn more about the important process initiated after drug development. Just as it can be beneficial for scientists in pharma to acquire knowledge about the business side of things, so too should R&D leaders extend their competencies.

In a 2016 review for executive search firm Russell Reynolds, Krueger and Rajdev noted the importance of fostering a strategic mindset across an organization’s R&D team through collaboration with other parts of the business, including finance, business development, and commercial teams. Only with knowledge of the business’s many dimensions can a multidisciplinary team truly thrive.

Playtime May Really Be Think Time The cry for more free days in the laboratory may be less about allowing scientists to explore broader research interests and more about giving these hardworking professionals time to think. Rather than dedicating precious laboratory time to playful exploration, management should focus on keeping the administrative sludge out of the pipes where the creative juices of scientists are meant to flow. //// Dr. Ted Witek is Professor and Senior Fellow at the Institute of Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation (IHPME) at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto and Chief Scientific Officer at Innoviva in San Francisco. He is an advisor to the Design for Health program at OCAD University.

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Why the Next Frontier of AI Might Be Child’s Play

Batteries

included

By Sydney Kidd

At the peak of the knowledge economy, the premium we placed on intellect could be clearly measured across the market. Firms invested heavily in opportunities to recruit the best and brightest, with the cost of acquiring this human capital justified by measurable returns to shareholders. Then, something shifted.

Capital began circumventing our grey matter and was instead injected into AI, leading us to question: What happens when the value proposition posed by the modern human brain – which has been developing for over 200,000 years – begins to change?

The Turing Test In the early 1950s, computer scientist and mathematician Alan Turing posed a new question: Can machines think?

This gave rise to what has become known as the Turing test, which assesses a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent, human-like thought and behavior. One way we have tested machines in this regard has been to have them compete against humans in games. In other words, we have asked machines to exhibit their humanness by asking them to play, to very successful results: IBM Watson, for example, defeated two reigning Jeopardy! champions, while Deep Blue’s 1997 victory against chess champion Garry Kasparov signaled an important shift in AI. However, while these successes showed that machines could logically outsmart humans, even the strongest proponents of this technological advancement hesitated to conclude that we had truly recreated the ability to think like a human. Even now, the concept of distilling hundreds of thousands of years of human knowledge into a few microprocessors seems like an insult to the complexity that is the human mind – a complexity that we have yet to fully understand. Indeed, if given a task that relies on imagination, machines would most certainly fail the Turing test. After all, imagination is a uniquely human trait.

photo: idris mootee

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The Evolution of Imagination

How Childhood Builds Innovators

From an evolutionary biology perspective, our ancestors’ development of imagination was a significant change that led to our species’ marked departure from chimpanzees.

While other animals dedicated resources to developing more powerful jaws, thicker scales, longer claws, and other useful traits, the evolution of Homo sapiens lent itself to increased brainpower. Creativity manifested itself as a key adaptation for the development and survival of our species.

Unlike other mammals, Homo sapiens made and used tools, and harnessed fire to cook. This innovative procurement of food led to the establishment of highly coordinated hunting systems and societies, which eventually grew to become states and nations. Over time, we devised ways of governance by recording scripture and law. We also constructed societal norms, traditions, and ideologies – all of which came from our imaginations.

For a human brain to fully develop, two main components are required: energy, in the form of large amounts of calories, and a period of prolonged growing. Childhood, a state that begins as a drain on communal resources, ends up paying dividends later, as it allows the human brain to build the neuronal ensemble scaffolding critical to imagination.

During childhood, the brain exhibits strong plasticity and a capacity for varied myelination leading to synchronous firing, a key component of imagination. Cumulative cultural evolution describes another uniquely human phenomenon: the propensity for copying behavior. Children exhibit this habit throughout their development when they play pretend, which allows them to situate themselves in imaginary scenarios that mimic those navigated by adults. This imitation shapes the developing brain’s wiring and firing, allowing children to quickly acquire skills. The ability to learn through imaginative play is a competitive advantage for our species, as even into adulthood, we are able to creatively build off of the foundational knowledge we acquire in childhood. In short, the pretend play of childhood serves as ground zero for the imagination that society itself is built upon.

With no other species’ offspring existing in such a dependent state for so long, humans are able to reach economies of intellectual scale unmatched in the animal kingdom. But is it possible that this advantage has run its course in the emerging man-machine intellectual hierarchy?

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The Next Generation of Imagination The feeling of liminality associated with this point in history is palpable; humans are no longer assured of the value of the human mind in tomorrow’s economy. On paper, it appears that we humans have started to remove ourselves entirely from the equation – the right hand no longer knows what the left hand is doing. But before we arm ourselves for a neo-Luddite revolt, we should stop to reflect on this alarmist narrative.

Aided by technology, humans now imagine in ways we never could before. We’ve imagined a world in which we no longer control the wheel of a car; in which space tourism is the norm; and even in which 3D-printed organs extend our mortality.

And it was humans who imagined the very machines that now challenge our standing as the sole creators of new ideas.

The human mind is no longer the only key player, as it is increasingly challenged by machines – but these challenges can be the very thing that pushes us to evolve into the most exciting period of human innovation yet. ////

Artificial Childhood For decades, humans have worked to advance the capabilities of machines. By evolving and programming the “genetic” code of computers, we have advanced technology, reduced our own cognitive loads, and subsequently gained the freedom to imagine the next application of our innovations.

Recently, we took a quantum leap and allowed machines to learn and to teach each other. In other words, we programmed AI – and it, in turn, began programming itself.

In 2011, AI took a new step toward truly passing the Turing test with the birth of a subdiscipline of machine learning known as deep learning. Deep-learning algorithms seek to truly replicate the way the human brain works by building connections between synapses. Most recently, Google’s DeepMind began inputting imagination-augmented agents (I2As) into its software, which helps the AI sort valuable predictions about its environment from predictions with little value. The era of synthetic imagination is upon us.

The most compelling part of this new wave of intelligence is how this synthetic imagination learns. As was done with IBM Watson, researchers continue trying to bolster the ability of AI to out-compete the human mind by asking it to play.

Until recently, games where machines must imagine possible scenarios and build strategy had puzzled programmers.

Then, in 2015, AlphaGo defeated champion Lee Sedol at Go, an ancient Chinese strategy game with exponentially more possible scenarios to imagine than a logic-based game of chess.

The first iteration of AlphaGo was impressive, to say the least. However, the speed of what happened next was startling even to researchers. While AlphaGo learned by studying the moves of the most skilled human player of Go, the next iteration, AlphaGo Zero, had no such training.

AlphaGo Zero was programmed only with the rules of the game. It then played itself over and over again, learning and improving with each game. In just 40 days, AlphaGo Zero became the greatest Go player in the world – and it did this all through self-play. In a way, the AI underwent an artificially programmed period of childhood, which allowed for a wiring and rewiring of artificial neural networks through pretend play.

Sydney Kidd is an Innovation Analyst at Idea Couture.

// The pretend play of childhood serves as ground zero for the imagination that society itself is built upon. //

Three years of fussing. And suddenly she likes showering.

Sometimes the art of engineering is more convincing than the art of persuasion. Especially when it turns the everyday into an experience. hansgrohe. Meet the beauty of water.

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Lessons from nimbl on Designing Financial Services for Young People

By Dav id B r a id

I vividly recall the moment I was introduced to cursive writing. Learning meant repetition on a blackboard, and I still remember the cakey texture the chalk left on my small fingers. I can also recall early geometry and algebra lessons, where shapes and tiles helped translate abstract concepts into something tangible. I even remember being asked at age eight to imagine my dream job – I wasn’t quite sure what it meant at the time, but I was certain I wanted to be a courtroom judge. One thing that I can’t recall, however, is when I first learned about money.

While six-year-old me was a one-time thief from the family change jar, and at seven I was making what I considered significant purchases at the corner shop, I’m not certain I ever had a formal introduction to or education about the concept of money. It was just always there – it was a means to get what I wanted.

I recently met with Clint Wilson – founder and CEO of nimbl – who is leading the charge to change the way children learn and interact with money. Launched in 2016, nimbl is a UK-based fintech organization that provides tools for 8-18 year olds to manage their money. Built on the premise that children learn by doing, experiencing, and making mistakes, nimbl is a platform for education and exploration, and, importantly, it is built for the digital economy. As payments shift from notes and coins to figures on screens, touchless transactions, and alternative currencies, our conceptual and cultural understanding of money will be redefined to suit a digital context. To date, typical childhood experiences with money – like finding stray coins, collecting pennies, and receiving crisp notes in birthday cards – have shaped the relationships many adults have with money.

However, children growing up today and in the future may have very different initial interactions and associations, and subsequently, a different understanding of money altogether.

Motivated by something larger than just payments and transactions, Clint sees nimbl as a way to make young people “financially confident, not just component” by providing a safe space to learn about money, using real money. Having already achieved media buzz, aggressive adoption, and award recognition, nimbl has three significant elements that make it unique: its focus on appropriate brand experience, holistic approach to financial learning, and built-in mechanisms to facilitate conversation between children and parents.

Young People Don’t Want a “Kid” Version

Spending and Saving Are Intertwined

With a slick prepaid debit MasterCard and smartphone app, nimbl doesn’t shout “made for kids,” unlike the many other products and services aimed at children.

This is intentional.

As Clint describes, when developing nimbl, his team did extensive design research to define “a brand that would be cool to an eight-year-old boy and a teenage girl. It couldn’t be a bright orange card,” Clint elaborates, because “young people really want something that looks like what Mom and Dad carry.” Even though users may be juvenile in many aspects, the brand needed to echo a tone aligned with their aspirations for maturity.

This is reflected in the electric blue card and app experience, where features like statements, spending controls, and alerts are presented in a grown-up yet digestible way. Though the user’s main purchases may still be corner-shop sweets or games (or, increasingly, online purchases), the entire experience has been designed to facilitate awareness and foster greater independence.

“Ultimately, however,” Clint explains, “it’s the parents we had to convince that it’s safe, responsible, and secure.”

While nimbl was borne from a desire to enable parents with a digital way to give “pocket money” to their children, Clint “always wanted nimbl to be about saving as well as spending.”

“In a digital, cashless ecosystem,” Clint states, “the idea of saving regular pocket change is gone.

There’s a strong connection [when learning about money] to cash in hand; for me, counting pennies created an understanding of saving. In digital, it’s harder to replicate these experiences.” While many parents have savings accounts for their kids, this doesn’t contribute to the child’s understanding of saving money. Within nimbl, there is a built-in microsaving account for small saving targets, which Clint acknowledges “won’t be enough money to make them rich, but it will teach them that regular saving of small amounts is meaningful.”

The user interface has been designed to encourage children to engage with their savings, while the microsavings accounts are intended to help them reach shorter-term (3-6 months) savings targets. There are also elements of gamification (e.g. savings certificates) to nudge users to achieve their savings goals.

Data Creates Dialogue The cardholders may be the children, but nimbl is really a platform to facilitate exchange between children and their parents. Parents “hold the reigns” when it comes to overall governance of the account, including providing transfers and setting restrictions (e.g.

ATM or online purchase limits). However, what’s more valuable is the dialogue that the shared interactions can stimulate.

Beyond the financial, this can start a broader dialogue around lifestyle – from fostering healthy eating choices to discussing socializing habits.

With digital alerts and statements available to both parents and children, nimbl makes data available to facilitate open conversations around behavior, value, and even financial planning. In an increasingly intangible world, this information can play a significant role in helping children make sense of money and the ways in which they can manage it.

Defining Relationships With Money In The Philosophy of Money, sociologist and philosopher Georg Simmel presents an argument that money is a structuring agent that helps us understand the world around us, including how we define value, how we compare things, how we decide which things are important, and even how we understand life.

Now, as the physical gives way to digital, we have more opportunity than ever to design meaningful experiences that help us understand how money “structures” the world around us. How will we pass along values and teach the new generations to understand their world?

How will we substitute natural learning practices with designed experiences? What purpose will these experiences have? What meaning and relationships will we cultivate with the young people of tomorrow?

With any luck, the future will look to correct the past, as Clint describes: “We don’t want another generation walking in blindly. It’s our responsibility to empower young people.” //// David Braid is Head of Strategy, Europe, at Idea Couture.

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into neat little boxes. Structure and a siloed mentality are the norm, while playing, with all its infinite wealth of possibilities, is regarded as a foolish pastime best left to our childhood years. It’s regarded as nothing more than a sign of immaturity in adulthood.

Here we now are, a group of adults standing at the intersection of cataclysmic societal changes brought on by advancements in digital technology – and all of us with closed-off mindsets. Instead of pivoting or looking for creative ways to problem-solve, we are scuttling like lumbering dinosaurs.

Is it any wonder then that our businesses and brands are failing? Failing to remain relevant. Failing to retain customer loyalty, and, most importantly, failing to think creatively.

In today’s landscape, which tacitly requires us to be more playful, exploratory, engaging, and to constantly evolve, out-of-the-box solutions cannot support the reframing of business and brand models. Is this complex, technology-immersed landscape so otherworldly that we – the species who built the wheel, discovered fire, and created some of the most monumental inventions for survival – have lost our way?

Should we be alarmed, then, when the fashion industry – the very arbiter of creative innovation – fails to creatively connect with its consumers as it once did?

How Brands Are Using “Play” to Stay in the Game

B y M a r l e n e P. N a i c k e r

Childhood: those carefree days of rambunctious young life, where “playing” was a way of exploring; where we deconstructed and hacked our physical realities into our own creative imaginings; where we evolved by being flexible and tolerant of changing playing fields; where we engaged and played productively with one another, sharing a common vision and goal.

Our young lives fed on this cognitive stimulation. It drove us to experiment outside of any given boundaries and helped us creatively change the meaning of our everyday physical tools – all for the sake of enacting our game. After all, how

else did the sofa cushions turn into makeshift castles during a game of dungeons and dragons?

As the age-old proverb goes, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” In the same vein, literacy professor Dr. Karen E. Wohlwend asserted in her 2015 article, “Making, Remaking, and Reimagining the Everyday: Play, Creativity, and Popular Media,” that children use contexts – such as play scenarios – through relocation, where they “‘make do’… and reimagine together what seems possible as they come up with pretend alternatives and imagined worlds that better fit their purposes.”

Yet after childhood comes young adulthood, bringing with it academia – which places our pioneering, creative spirits

photo: idris mootee

// Any brand willing to play today will still be in the game tomorrow. //

A Closer Look at Playful Brands What if we viewed work and play as a single unit, rather than separate entities? What if we bootstrapped the psychology behind childhood play – where our focus is free to wander, and we can explore any idea without restrictions – and used this as a part of a creative business-mapping process? Could this free will help us rewire our mindset and master ambiguity in a complex landscape where reality is constantly being redefined?

In this scenario, managers, designers, and strategists would be equipped to playfully improvise with constantlyevolving digital trends and to seamlessly pivot with new technology inventions such as AI, 3D printing, nanotechnology, augmented reality (AR), VR, blockchain, radio-frequency identification (RFID), holograms, and more. These “super toys” would be morphed into powerful tools for product innovation, customer engagement, and brand retention.

In today’s digital society, most consumers have the attention span of a flickering light bulb. People want a product that is multi-functional, reasonably priced, and that has an authentic narrative. More importantly, they want a product to be personalized to their individual needs and they want to act as a partner – a player in a brand’s narrative – during their purchasing journey.

Very few old brand stalwarts have made that transition successfully, though there are some exceptions. Sephora, Hamleys, and Vans, for example, have created environments that are rich in new product experiences, product innovation, and personalized brand engagement for their customers – without impinging on any of their fundamental brand values.

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The Sixth P Brand marketing strategies today are less about communication and more about conversation – conversation between a brand and their consumers on a singular digital platform.

Brands must interact with their consumers as peers and put personalization – the sixth P – at the intersection of their product, price, promotion, place, and people strategy. The psychology behind play could be the Holy Grail for achieving this interaction.

As the old adage goes, “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.”

This statement may have been easily dismissed in another time, but today, it could be a brand’s saving grace for truly understanding their consumers.

A smart company would entrench value based on agility, openness, and a shared brand philosophy between their consumers, products, and brand. They would think in many different ways – big, small, and experientially. They would recognize that this new playing field means going back to the basics; that is, they would understand that failure will be a part of the picture as they explore new ideas and pursue innovation.

Operationally, they would form cross-disciplinary teams with marketers, designers, and strategists, who would be hybrids comfortable playing within ambiguous environments.

And strategically, they would add personalization as a sixth element – the connecting point of their marketing strategy – and use the methodology of play to inspire and craft that great brand story.

In short, any brand willing to play today will still be in the game tomorrow, long after their peers have fallen out of the rankings. ////

Aircraft Management • Aircraft Maintenance • Charter Services Award-Winning FBO’s • Aircraft Sales • HondaJet

Marlene P. Naicker freelances as an innovation consultant at CEA.Fashion.

Toronto | Montreal | Calgary | Ottawa

photo: idris mootee

Sephora, which is heavily reliant on brand licensing and partnerships, has cleverly navigated these murky waters by facing the challenging question of their platform’s relevance.

They created an ecosystem of demand by building a powerful community and an emotional relationship with consumers with their “Teach, Inspire, and Play” (TIP) approach. The consumer is an integral player in their in-store beauty classes and how-to videos. Sephora connects the consumer with personalized product information both online and in-store, and they couple it with an engaging, exciting brand experience.

The consumer is a co-creator in this open-ended, non-static environment; they are encouraged to interact with a powerful feedback loop. Their interactions co-exist seamlessly with those of their peers, all while remaining on the Sephora platform.

It’s a different landscape for toy companies today, however.

In the past, these retail stores inspired natural enthusiasm and excitement from children with just the mere mention of their brand name. But today, these very proprietors of playful childhood dreams must compete against companies selling new super toys, such as VR and AR games, as well as with those providing 24-hour access to digital media. A few toy brands, however, have managed to stand their ground.

Much like Sephora, Hamleys have subtly rewired their brand relevance by designing a theme park-inspired retail layout. Each product they sell speaks to a recognizable childhood story and theme, with some themes including Enchanted Forest, Imagination, LEGO World, Magic Kingdom, Metropolis, Motor City, Park, Safari, and Space.

This nontraditional, open-ended environment encourages customers of all ages to play, building a long-lasting personal and emotive connection with the consumer. It boosts the brand’s reputation and its product relevance while also allowing the consumer to be a player in their brand narrative by sharing their experiences via social media.

Footwear giant Vans is another exciting example of how evolving from traditional marketing strategies can result in commercial success. They took the very essence of their brand DNA and crafted it into an authentic, edgy brand experience with their in-store retail concept in the tunnels of Waterloo station. Coined the House of Vans, the store is not just a point of sale, but also a place for consumers to connect. Their indoor skate park, art galleries, and live music venue fuses into one seamless physical manifestation for Vans. The consumer’s purchasing journey is entirely personalized; in a similar fashion to how children imagine physical tools as various play items (think turning a wooden spoon into a sword), Vans has created a space where consumers can “morph” the tools of digital media and physical space, and in doing so elevate brand awareness and build brand loyalty.

These three examples clearly reflect how a company can better navigate change and grow their consumer base by exploring, evolving, and productively engaging with their audience using a shared vision and goal. Traditional business models, on the other hand, are task-oriented juggernauts – everything is linear, and everyone has a specific role. Simply put, these models fail to translate to today’s realities. In a world where a brand’s relevance is no longer a given based on maturity, performance, or the successful implementation of Kotler’s Five Ps of Marketing (product, price, promotion, place, and people), it’s apparent that another element needs to be added to the mix.

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Re-becoming Me A Case for Finding Play Again

Do you often feel that you are not yourself? That your actions do not mirror your spirit and the core of who you are, and that you are engaged in a repetitive series of motions that do not originate within you? This is a feeling often felt by most adults, and yet rarely by children. Children at play are free; adults at work are constrained by job descriptions and the expectations of others. We ask ourselves at times: “What would I do now if I had the freedom to be myself?” We understand the answer implicitly: I am not myself any time I do things that I don’t want to do, for reasons that are not mine, in a place not of my choosing, and for reasons outside of myself. To re-become me, I need the freedom to be who I am, and for that I need play as a condition of being.

We play because we need to determine our own boundaries for freedom, to discover pleasure, and to explore. We play because we need to discover how it feels to be ourselves, how it feels to be free from expected utilitarian results and

oppression. Every play activity we engage in is a one-of-a-kind laboratory for our instincts, insights, and intuition. We create the freedom to work the way we need to, on whatever we desire.

As I explained in my 2006 book, The Imagination Challenge, while play behavior has historically dominated human consciousness and defined human values, society has systemically removed play from the equation by manufacturing and maintaining a dichotomy between work and play. We have all been participants and accomplices in this organized death of imagination after childhood by removing play from everyday life and work. In doing so, we have created regulated channels where play as profession is subcontracted to specific adult groups – such as professional athletes, actors, or musicians. They are socially allowed to play, though it is not without a cost to the rest of society. How much of what we feel passionately about – the things that inspire or excite our curiosity and imagination – is found in our daily jobs? For many of us, a gap exists between our role as outputs in an organization and our role as humans. As adults, we must retrieve our imagination, integrating it into work by redefining what work can be. But what are the tools at our disposal to accomplish this?

Behavioral Objects

photo: idris mootee

By Alexander Manu

// Hands do not initiate play; the mind must do it first. //

Our relationship with tools is instrumental in nature – the interactions we perform with our tools are goal-oriented, finite, and focused on accomplishing a task. Play objects – toys – engender affinity-based relationships. We identify and engage emotionally with such objects and express our inner selves through the actions we perform with them. Such actions are not goal-driven but rather they are exploratory.

The questions that drive our interactions with play objects are, “What else can this object be?,” “What else can this object do?,” and “How else can this object make me feel?”

In exploring the answers to these questions, we employ our imagination. By imagining and experimenting, latent needs and possibilities are revealed in both the object and in ourselves. In this way, qualities of emotion, self-expression, identification, and connection are all latent within a play object. These are the transformative qualities of objects, spaces, and ideas, and they transform the individual because they are compelling in their engagement.

Transforming a piece of technology into a behavioral object – something that invites use via stimuli, directs the user, and responds and provides feedback to their actions – is

very much what a good toy does. Toys are perfect examples of behavioral objects; by themselves they mean and do nothing. They are designed for relationships, for the experience of use, and not simply for their movable parts or aesthetic form. The functionality of a toy resides in its potential for creating a relationship, either between user and toy, or among users.

If you think about it, this very fundamental idea might well have been the development brief for the iPhone. When we intentionally add elements for behavior to any object or system, we are purposefully transforming that object into a playful behavior space. It is this transformative attribute that makes the experience of using the iPhone compelling, and it is also transformation that maintains the relationship with the device and results in satisfaction. The iPhone is an invitation to bring play into “serious” life, reuniting the accomplishment of goal-oriented tasks with the experimentation and selfexpression of play.

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Reclaiming Play: A Manifesto

A New Conceptual Model To create a compelling experience with products and technology, we must look at a new conceptual model – one that places play behavior at the core of the creation of user experiences and products. Indeed, two books – Homo Ludens, Johan Huizinga’s 1938 study of play among Europeans, and anthropologist Roger Caillois’s Man, Play and Games – describe play as our precise interactions with ATMs, email, and mobile phones. By designing with play behavior and interactivity as the experience providers, we create the benefit of the best toys: They are fun, engaging, challenging, rewarding, non-frustrating, and the value of the experience is both repeatable and cumulative. Play should not be seen here as a trivial activity that’s performed by hands and objects, but rather as a highly spiritual activity dependent on imagination and creativity, more than on any play artifact. The artifact for play is the human brain. Hands do not initiate play; the mind must do it first. In my 1995 book, I coined the term “ToolToy” to emphasize the importance of consciously reexamining the design and development process in the context of an improved conceptual and behavioral model in which play, and the values it represents, has a pivotal role.

When we intentionally start adding elements of manner and relationship – behavioral play characteristics – to any object or system that contains elements of purpose (that is, any object that must help human beings in the performance of tasks) we are transforming a tool into a ToolToy. Think Apple Watches, Nike shoes, iPhones, smartcars, and the like. Tools are designed for what we do with them; ToolToys determine the way we do it – which involves our physical technique as well as our imagination.

The ToolToy is the aesthetic of the possible. //// Alexander Manu is a strategic innovation practitioner, international lecturer, and author.

Play behavior dominates human consciousness and defines human values.

Human values drive behavior and coherent human action.

Latent imagination and creativity are embedded in play behavior.

Play generates new ways of combining ideas, patterns of ideas, images, and concepts.

Play behavior transforms these concepts into useful and practical ways of enabling purposeful human action that improves the human condition.

Play is ageless, and while “at play” people are just people – they are themselves.

Play is the ideal conduit for communication between people; communication creates connections and encourages collaboration.

Collaboration is key in the exploration of possibility and in achieving productivity and competitiveness.

Play is freedom, and that freedom is a precondition for exploration, imagination, and discovery.

People thrive while at play as they pursue to discover the best of themselves, in mastery.

Mastery gives the confidence for self-discovery and the multidimensional expression of who we truly are.

All of the above are conditions for the self-satisfaction of individuals.

Play is life.

It is the sum of our spirit of being alive.

FORESIGHT

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Death of a Device Where Is the Smartphone Going Next?

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The car is not the new smartphone.

It will be a while before smartphones become obsolete.

AR will either save or kill the smartphone.

Even though some people might argue that the car is the next smartphone, this is not the case.

Despite many efforts to make cars smarter, the car will not become the new smartphone. According to a study done by Harvard Health Watch, the average American spends 101 minutes per day driving. As for smartphone use, according to Flurry Analytics – which is part of the Yahoo Developer Network – the average US consumer spends five hours per day on their mobile devices. It seems that, when it comes to total utilization, the smartphone is unquestionably outperforming the car. Another major distinction is that people will always use smartphones, but the number of people who own cars is declining.

The first phone to use Symbian, the first mobile operating system, was the touchscreen Ericsson R380 Smartphone, which was first released in 2000. A combination of a PDA and a mobile phone, this was the first device marketed as a “smartphone.”

Now, 18 years later, the smartphone is our digital companion. It has singlehandedly made other devices – including the camera, GPS, and MP3 player – obsolete. Our ability to push the smartphone forward, however, is coming close to an end.

New devices will replace some smartphone functions, but it will still take a long time for the smartphone to disappear. I would even go so far as to say that it’s still too early to predict the death of such a ubiquitous device; after all, many capabilities that smartphones have replaced on devices like the PC, television, and even the radio have not meant the death of those original devices. After all, we still watch TV, use laptops, and crank up the radio in our cars.

02 Smartphones will fade into the background, but it will take time.

The smartphone is no longer a growing industry. People care less and less about their phones, even as they spend increasingly more time on them. Make no mistake: It will probably be at least 10 years before any kind of meaningful shift away from the smartphone occurs.

But this is not stopping people from speculating on where the next radical innovation in smartphones will come from. Investments are moving from smartphones, shifting instead toward AI and autonomous vehicles. Suddenly, the smartphone is more akin to the calculator 20 years ago; you need one, but you are not buying a new device every 10 months.

So, what does the future of the smartphone look like?

04 AI is the smartphone differentiator.

painting by Idris mootee Oil on canvas 2017

By Jaraad Mootee and Idris Mootee

Our relentless attempts to add and integrate new technology into our lives suggest that we would value an omni-device that integrates all functions and capabilities into one user-friendly interface. However, we should not expect any such device to emerge. In the near future, smartphones will become less important as other everyday objects are embedded with computing capabilities. Software will operate across devices and become embedded in our homes, offices, and public spaces. All we need to do is to show up and speak up. In the future, voice-command technology will become more widely available, and microphones and cameras will be everywhere. When this occurs, our need for smartphones will decrease.

Big players like Samsung, Apple, Huawei, and Google are all scrambling to put AI technology into smartphones beyond simple applications that allow smartphones to learn about and recognize their owners. Novelty applications could have far broader capabilities; for example, there could be an app for sensing the user’s emotional state while they use the phone.

Smartphones could even be enabled to make predictions about how to make people happier, or to assist users in decision making throughout their everyday lives. AI is currently poised to have a substantial impact on jumpstarting the re-growth of smartphones.

With support from augmented reality (AR), it is very likely that there could be a smartphone renaissance.

The smartphone is an expensive piece of hardware that people already own and use. If enabled with AR, it could provide an almost infinite number of potential applications, such as indoor navigation, shopping, training, etc. In short, most apps would be enhanced by the implementation of AR technology – anything people can currently do on their smartphones, an AR-enabled smartphone would allow them to do better.

If done properly, AI could be one of the most important innovations of our time. As AR hardware is still constantly being improved upon, it is difficult to tell whether it will support or hinder the survival of the smartphone. The question is around what form this technology will take. A pair of wearable glasses with AR capabilities, for example, could potentially kill the smartphone if people were to replace their smartphones with smart glasses.

Apple is currently playing with the design of a pair of smart glasses.

Today, many people walking down the street are looking at the screens they hold in the palm of their hands – it is not hard to see where the unmet needs are. Imagine if instead these people each wore a set of elegantly designed, lightweight Apple iGlasses.

They would be Siri-enabled, powered by the iPhone, and integrated with Apple’s future autonomous car. This will not be easy, as there are many issues Apple would need to solve for, including battery power, glass technology, processing power, and weight.

The threat to the smartphone is not great in the short term. Cars and smartphones – and other devices – will continue to co-exist for a long time before the smartphone will need to fight for its existence. //// Jaraad Mootee is a former consultant for Deloitte and is currently working on an emerging technology startup.

Idris Mootee is Global CEO at Idea Couture.

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Rethinking the Shopping Experience Shopping is a complex behavior that needs to be contextualized against various social, cultural, and economic backdrops. People shop (both window and otherwise) to feel good about themselves, to kill time, to get inspired, to socialize, and to show off. Purchasing goods is only a small part of what drives the $3T retail industry.

Assuming some or all of the drivers listed above are leading people to enter a store, how successful are retailers in meeting their customers’ needs and helping them feel motivated once they walk in the door?

Currently, only a small number of retailers are going this extra mile. Established brands, like Nike and Sonos, and luxury brands, such as Hermès and Louis Vuitton, have already shifted away from using the retail space to “sell” in favor of leveraging it as a place to “show and engage.”

The flagship Sonos store in Soho is an example of how a retail space can be transformed into an immersive environment that sparks customers’ sense of discovery and nourishes their curiosity – the same feelings ignited when humans are in “play mode.” So, how can retailers design spaces that nurture this mental shift away from considering stores as only

Playful Pop-Up Culture Embracing the Future of Retail

B y M a r ya m N a b av i

// Designing a space that provides a sense of wonder and amusement is key.

This goes beyond making a space look good; it is about making every customer touchpoint connect to the visitor’s sense of discovery. //

photo: idris mootee

We’ve all heard warnings about the retail apocalypse. In this dystopian future, people will do most of their shopping – or even all of it – online, and cities will be left with thousands of empty spaces where stores once stood. It will be the end of retail as we know it. However, these dark warnings are based on one key assumption: that retail is only about selling goods and products.

It’s true that the type of retail that provides no value other than providing goods will likely find it challenging to survive in the face of digital transformation – but that ignores the other side of the story. By capitalizing on the positive effects of play on consumers’ minds, retailers can shape a more optimistic future for their industry.

It was this other side that attracted me to retail, and specifically popups, in the first place. With a background in designing IoT solutions for leading technology companies, I saw an opportunity to help create better experiences for emerging retail brands and their customers. I also saw an opportunity to play a positive role in shaping where the industry goes. But we’re jumping ahead a little.

First, we have to understand just how important play is to retail. Researchers have long studied how our minds function when we play, and they have learned that there are several beneficial effects of play on the mind, regardless of a person’s age. During play, our minds are more receptive to new ideas, and we feel happier and more motivated. But perhaps the most important finding is that when we’re in play mode, we are fully engaged and focused on the task at hand. Herein lies the biggest opportunity for retail: a play-inspired framework that leverages this focus to create meaningful moments of engagement with customers.

as a place to shop, and instead encourage shoppers to see them as a space for play and discovery?

Designing a space that provides a sense of wonder and amusement is key. This goes beyond making a space look good; it is about making every customer touchpoint connect to the visitor’s sense of discovery. The Sonos store, for example, has achieved this by creating immersive audio experiences in individual rooms, each of which represents part of a house or a mood. Each time they step into a new room, the guest participates in a tailored experience shaped by a combination of music, sound quality, lighting, and interior design.

Another important element for making spaces more playful is surprise. To achieve a feeling of surprise, more retailers are establishing short-term spaces in the form of pop-up shops and concept stores. The transient nature of these venues gives people a reason to visit them now, not “one day.” With the addition of launch parties and in-house DJs, pop-up stores are easily transformed into some of the hottest venues in areas like New York City’s Soho. Short-term retail and pop-up shops represent a $50B industry that’s increasingly growing. This growth is largely due to the popularity of these venues among younger generations.

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You Can’t Pop Up With the Press of a Button

Pop-Up in a Box There are still many challenges to overcome when it comes to building a physical retail space that is interactive, agile, and truly engaging. For example, there is no quick solution available for emerging brands to develop store systems and experiences that allow them to move quickly from design to launch. While storytelling and customer interaction may be key drivers of retail, there’s no toolbox out there to empower brands and retailers in building fun and engaging customer experiences.

This is why I launched my startup, Upper, which aims to provide solutions for this problem.

Upper will feature an open-source library of digital apps and physical modules for emerging brands to power their retail spaces. The company’s first product line will be a LEGO-like smart fixture kit that can be fully customized for individual retail spaces. The kit will come with a menu of interactions and applications that can be built online via the Upper platform.

Upper will help to enable entrepreneurs in their journey to turn any retail space into an experiential platform for their brand. Together with other companies working on removing barriers to brick-and-mortar retail, Upper democratizes access to intelligent and experiential retail spaces.

It may not be clear what the future of retail looks like, but it certainly won’t be like anything we’ve seen so far. If the line between shopping and experience continues to blur, as they are doing now, retail spots could become urban destinations for a host of playful branded activities that allow consumers to learn about a brand’s products, services, and stories.

There certainly is no shortage of unique ideas. The question is this: How quickly can the retail infrastructure move to catch up with and exceed customers’ expectations? //// Maryam Nabavi is the founder of Upper, a Toronto-based startup devoted to building interactive store kits for emerging brands and retailers.

photo: idris mootee

Great, now you’ve got the ingredients for an exciting experienced-based pop-up shop all figured out – in theory.

But what about execution? The reality is that the pop-up’s uniqueness and short-term nature makes it extremely challenging for retailers to get these projects off the ground.

That’s where companies like Pop Up Mob come in. Pop Up Mob is a New York-based pop-up agency and incubator, helping clients bring their retail dreams to life. They’ve had some very interesting projects, including a collaboration with rapper A$AP Rocky and retailer Guess to create a fun and playful temporary store to launch a new clothing line.

The concept was to turn a two-story building in LA into a tree house inspired by A$AP’s childhood fantasy. It featured arcade and video games, photo booths, and food stations – all revolving around a 20-foot tree. As Pop Up Mob’s cofounder Ana Pelucarte describes, “The night before the pop-up opened, [A$AP] threw a party, and the next day, the line of the pop-up [was huge], and of course they sold out all of their inventory.”

Agencies like Pop Up Mob have enabled established companies to launch their pop-ups and concept stores with only a few weeks between concept and launch. But there’s a larger sea of emerging brands that may not have the deep pockets to execute on something of that scale. As online customer acquisition costs skyrocket, smaller brands know it’s critical to have a brick-and-mortar presence to elevate their brand awareness and increase conversion offline.

To address this, companies like thisopenspace are helping these brands remove and overcome the financial barriers that they would otherwise have to deal with to get their products in prime retail spots around the world. Thisopenspace has experience working with large brands, like IKEA, but also sees an opportunity to help give smaller brands the same means as the big guys. By curating and launching thematic pop-up shops, like the Sleepover by thisopenspace, the company is hoping “to provide entrepreneurs with access to retail in multiple markets quickly and efficiently, without the capital that is generally required to get there,” explains David King, Senior Manager, Special Projects at thisopenspace.

“By showing brands that a space that may seem cost prohibitive doesn’t have to be, and by making [the space] accessible to five brands that may not have been able to afford [it], we’re really helping to shape the sharing economy of retail.”

When asked what he thinks of using retail as a playground, David explained, “Going shopping is a form of play.

Shopping is playing. While a lot of brands are trying to mimic the McDonald’s PlayPlace strategy to get people to shop, in a way they’re building distractions. At the end of the day, retailers and landlords want to do things that get customers to engage with the retail space. But this needs to be done in an intentional way, because there are places cropping up in malls all the time.”

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photo: Neuehouse

Walla Walla, Washington Charlie’s Burgers Neuehouse Experience Art Anne Sportun

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Experience

Heading West to Walla Walla, Washington

AVA, an area in the Columbia Valley AVA. This vineyard is among the world’s most extraordinary sites of vine planting. It features a dramatic series of hillside “benches” with a young terroir, which was formed by volcanic activity and other environmental effects of the Missoula Floods during the last ice age. These events changed the soil profile, creating fractured basalt deposits and thin topsoil in some places, and areas of deep, sandy loam in others. Meanwhile, the climate of the area – with its dry, warm growing seasons and cool nights – results in grapes that are ideal for rich, full wines with vibrant fruit notes.

Long Shadows Vintners’ founder, Allen Shoup, established the unique winery by inviting some of the world’s finest winemakers to access Washington State’s finest grapes. The group utilizes vineyards from many different AVAs within the larger Columbia Valley AVA, including Yakima, Horse Heaven Hills, Red Mountain, and, of course, Walla Walla.

The winery offers seven different wines, each of which is influenced by a different part of the world: / Poet’s Leap, a Riesling developed by German winemaker Armin Diel / Feather, a cabernet sauvignon developed by winemaker Randy Dunn, known for his Howell Mountain and Napa Valley wines / Pirouette, a red blend by Philippe Melka and Agustin Huneeus, Sr., also known for their work in Napa / Pedestal, a merlot from French winemaker Michel Rolland / Saggi, a Sangiovese by Tuscan father–son duo Ambrogio and Giovanni Folonari / Sequel, a syrah from Australian John Duval

B y D r. T e d W i t e k

When one thinks of wine from America’s West Coast, the valleys of Napa and Sonoma usually come to mind.

But there are other treasures to be found outside of California – take, for example, the vineyards on the Eastern side of the Columbia Valley AVA in Washington State. The soul and spirit of the region’s winemaking are best demonstrated by the innovative team at Long Shadows Vintners.

Long Shadows sources its grapes from several vineyards, including the Benches in Horse Heaven Hills

Describing his journey to Long Shadows, Nicault passionately explained: “Here I am, this Frenchman in the middle of nowhere on an internship for the 1994 vintage, and I fall in love with the Pacific Northwest, the people, and the potential to make high-end wines with impressive diversity and complexity. This love continued when I started at Long Shadows in 2003 for their inaugural vintage – followed by the opportunity and pleasure of working alongside some of the world’s finest winemakers. These are not consultants, but collaborators, bringing fresh ideas to our vineyards and amazing wines to our customers.”

Personally, I couldn’t agree more. //// longshadows.com

photos: Long Shadows Winery, Ted Witek

/ Chester-Kidder, a red blend from Long Shadows’ own director of winemaking and viticulture, French-born Gilles Nicault

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Charlie’s Burgers Shaking Up a Classic Recipe

NeueHouse Rethinking Workspaces

By Mira Blumenthal

Franco Stalteri knows the restaurant industry inside and out, which means he also understands that the experience of dining out needs to be shaken up a bit. That’s why in February 2009, he started a dinner series called Charlie’s Burgers (CB) to offer a space for chefs to experiment, test out new dishes, and play.

How did CB come to be, and what’s with the name?

CB started in a much simpler, pre-social media time. It was a casual, unpretentious, friendly series of Sunday dinners for some of us in the Toronto restaurant industry. Essentially,

it was a side project. From the get-go, we were decidedly anti-branding and anti-PR. As we’ve evolved, we’ve done our best to maintain this playfulness. A great example of this is that we’ve never decided whether we’re called “Charlie Burgers” or “Charlie’s Burgers.”

How is CB reimagining what a meal out looks like?

We focus on the experience.

We have people from all walks of life attend our dinners, and we’re trying to cultivate a movement away from the traditional corporate kitchen.

Our dinners break down the boundaries between the servers and those being served.

Chefs like cooking for us – and

patrons like eating with us – because the chefs don’t have to worry about food and labor costs, they can maintain creative control, and they can break the narrative of their restaurant menus (if they wish). They’re not tied to anything, so they can experiment, collaborate, share ideas, and play.

Imagine it’s 2028. What does dinner look like?

What’s the role of technology in this future?

If I was planning the dinner of the future, I’d focus on the past.

I’d create a narrative around historically significant dishes.

I don’t think the joy of eating or the art of the dinner party will change immensely in the

next decade.

Of course, we have to consider things like protein sustainability and trends like vertical farming, but I think it would be unique to go back to something antique and create an experience that evokes nostalgia.

Technology, of course, benefits the food industry and brings more products and services to more people, but it has also impacted how people imagine what dining is and means.

Technology can put the world at your fingertips, but it can also make things lose their luster – so I don’t think my dinner of the future would be particularly tech-focused. //// charliesburgers.ca

photos: Craig Rockwell, Neuehouse

By Mira Blumenthal

photos: Franco Stalteri

Expressed in a unique design language balancing art and industry, NeueHouse is a private collection of workspaces that empower cultural innovators to connect and ignite new ideas.

Suited to the most ambitious creatives in film, design, fashion, publishing, and the arts, many of whom work between Los Angeles and New York, NeueHouse is the ideal workplace for any bicoastal entrepreneur.

At the confluence of commerce and creativity, NeueHouse is pioneering the way people work in the emergence of a transformative economy, offering a home to the new creative class with permanent offices for businesses, as well as single desks for leaders who are looking to channel their creativity.

NeueHouse was the world’s first private work collective and is more than a physical space: It is a dedicated community where members share ideas, opportunities, and experiences, making it a true home for contemporary culture. ////

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Step Into an Extraordinary Visual Journey The Art of Fantasy, Sci-fi and Steampunk,

by Hiroshi Unno

By Esther Rogers

Take an unusual journey through art history in The Art of Fantasy, Sci-fi and Steampunk, a stunning yet quirky book by Hiroshi Unno that challenges the ways in which we tell a genre’s story. Half in Japanese and half in English, this uniquely curated work features over 360 pages of stunning artwork ranging from the Romantic Period to the Roaring Twenties.

From posters of Victorian fashion to the book covers of Jules Verne’s greatest adventures, we see the evolution of fantasy through the ages, including the inevitable infusion of futuristic steampunk elements

inspired by the Industrial Age. The topic is thoroughly researched, yet undaunting to read. While the influences of fantasy, sci-fi, and steampunk are undeniable in today’s popular culture – from fantasy-themed video games and films to epic space operas – the roots of our favorite stories and franchises have never been presented in a more artistic way. Unno has created something truly worthy of the genre.

The book itself feels good to touch, with thick, textured pages that perfectly emote the poster-inspired feel of the content. The greatest challenge readers will face is stopping themselves from tearing the pages out to plaster their walls with the beautiful artwork.

If you’re interested culture, design, or history, this is a must-have, but this book is guaranteed to be appreciated by anyone who simply enjoys holding a work of art in their hands. //// Price: $49.95 Available at all major book vendors, including Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.

photos: Chris Lynn

Experience Art

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Discover the Art of Anime and Manga Everyday Scenes from a Parallel World, PIE International

By Esther Rogers

Although anime has been around for decades, there has been a notable revival in the genre as of late.

Netflix is dubbing and rebooting old favorites, cuttingedge video game graphics are being pared down into nostalgic two-dimensional worlds, and the manga industry continues to stay strong, especially with the rise of digital publishing.

In Everyday Scenes from a Parallel World, it’s easy to see why anime and manga continue to garner interest. This beautiful collection features the work of 40 Japanese artists, depicting worlds that are

fantastical and yet rooted in something familiar. From the bustling streets of Tokyo to calming snowy landscapes, the book depicts itself in a way that the genre too rarely does: as a true art form.

In the heart of these beautiful city scenes and landscapes are the characters that add further depth to each still. From telling body language to subtle expressions, the characters provide a further look into the worlds we are being invited to explore. Each spread brims with emotion and offers yet another scene to get delightfully lost in – this is a real page-turner.

The details of the artwork are so intricate that it can be overwhelming to consider the time and dedication that went into the completion of each piece – but it was clearly worth it. Fans of the genre will be left in awe, and those unfamiliar with anime and manga may find themselves scouring Netflix for the latest releases. //// Price: $39.95 Available at all major book vendors, including Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.

photos: Chris Lynn

Experience Art

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b y tay lo r d e n n is

Toronto-born artist Anne Sportun founded her now-iconic jewelry brand in the late 1980s. Since then, each piece of her premium collection has been handmade in her Queen Street West studio in her hometown, where you can also find her flagship store. Sportun’s collection is sold throughout North America and the UK. At the foundation of the Anne Sportun brand is the belief that “every day is precious.” Equally suited for a day at the office as they are for a night on the town,

Anne Sportun’s designs offer a contemporary twist on simple, elegant fashions. The brand’s signature look is defined by a matte finish and hand-textured silhouettes – after all, originality never goes out of style.

The Gemstone Wrap Bracelet is available in three lengths and a variety of gemstones. It sells for $400-$2635 USD and can be purchased online at annesportun.com or at any boutique where Anne Sportun jewelry is sold. //// annesportun.com

photos: Anne Sportun

Anne Sportun Wrap Yourself in Something Beautiful

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SPACES + PLACES OF CARE

HUMAN INSIGHTS

THE FUTURE ACCORDING TO WOMEN

HUMANS AND INNOVATION

THE M/I/S/C/ GUIDE TO DESIGN THINKING

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