MGMT 239 Play in Culture and

Invention

1. Introduction

Ted Tschang
Outline for today

• Class matters
• Assessment
• Expectations and format of class
• Purpose, motivation
• Introduction
• what is playful invention
• Play and creativity
Assessment
• 1. Individual essay (35%)
• 3 pages single-spaced (not including refs), due in lesson 14 (TBC)
• Choose from topics or self-proposed, include reflections, connections
• 2. Individual reading reflection essays (on readings) (10%) (15%)
• Reflect on cluster of readings (relate to class, other refs): 2-3 pgs
• Submission deadlines TBA (short)
• 3. Class participation (20%) (15%)
• Including presentations
• Some online may be considered
• 4. Group project (35%) - due lesson 13, brief proposals before
• Design a specific playful process to create a creative experience
• Report on process due in-class – describe process, be creative and
analytical (reflection on process), adapt tools from class or use own
• Short presentation (~12 mins with prototype)
Groups - Expectations
You can form your own groups of 5, but groups should have
• 1. At least two non-business majors (and no more than two from a single
major)
• 2. no more than 2 friends or “familiar others” (i.e. been on a project
before)
• 3. Interests in a diversity of topics – taken from fashion, food, games,
reading and/or writing, entertainment, movies/video production,
theatre/play, or other hobbies
• You may share one interest in common but must have at least four other
interests across the group (interest means, “near hobby level”
• 4. A mix of analytical and creative thinkers
• Creative means “likes thinking creatively or freely” or creates within a domain
(even as a hobby, e.g. playing music)
• Analytical means “likes planning, organizing, searching for info”, etc.
• Those without groups or diversity, please see us as individuals/partial
groups and we’ll assign you to ensure diversity.
Class Daily Schedule and Expectations
• Typical class schedule
• Lecture and discussion (content, readings) ~ 1.5-2 hours
• Videos including discussion ~ 30+ mins
• Exercise ~ 30-45 mins (may be replaced by project work in 1-2 classes)
• Expectations
• Do reading before class (any changes to readings will be posted to
Elearn folder for the upcoming week)
• Understanding of readings is assessed (via class participation, final
reflection essay)
• Note: I don’t have time to go through every line on the slides, so read
to understand (or discuss with groups, me, etc.)
• Class behavior
• Using laptops in class (e.g. during lectures or when your group is
discussing) for non-class work is inappropriate
Housekeeping
• TA, myself
• Final projects
• Ideally not just “another game” or “another fashion” but could
gamified experience or fashion platform
• Should be a new experience, institution or something for a specific
sector.
• Could be meaningful (“serious”) purpose or entertaining one
• Tools: design thinking process (only parts), creative techniques
• Final essay topic
• Reflective does not mean “think and talk” - think deeply and in
relation to theoretical concepts, other refs that support your/add
points
•  Be in-depth in your reports, group and individual
When and where did you have your
best ideas? Why?
Motivation of course and themes

• Themes
• Focus on creativity and creative process,
• Using design process as proxy – modified
• removing stress on users (orienting to feedback), clients
• Context (ideas stem from culture)
• Play and creative play as emotive (created from positive
emotions)
• Human-senses, meaning (pathways), expressed verbally,
visually
• Connecting play-to-creativity – can we invent better
through play? Trick is, not instrumentally
• What does it mean to play, or to invent by play?
Notes on innovation, invention

• Invention was often thought to be the purview of

individual “backyard“ creators
• Increasingly, we collaborate to innovate (e.g. in design
thinking), but what does that mean
• Differences between invention and innovation
• innovations are usually defined as being successful in the
market (a lot of corporate “baggage”).
• Our focus is on creating interesting (imaginative) but
potentially useful things
• even if they are not commercializable – change the
world or the way we see it (new to the world ideas)
 The new world:
Recent claims on automation
(Old news, or is it?)

5 Views on Future Jobs,  The Straits Times, 3 April 2017

 Going forward: desirable skills vs. what we
emphasize in curricula

Connecting
Creating
Validating

Combining
Complex problem solving – developed capacities to solve novel, ill-defined problems in
complex, real-world settings
Critical thinking – logic and reasoning to identify strengths and weaknesses of alternative
solutions, conclusions of approaches to problems
Creativity – unusual or clever ideas… or to develop creative ways to solve a problem
Cognitive flexibility – ability to generate or use different sets of rules for combining or grouping
things in different ways
Can these traits involve play?
The Straits Times, 3 April 2017

Flexibility (of mind)

Enjoy what you do

interdisciplinary

Curiosity (= play?)
Big picture for course – bridging other
disciplines to human means of invention
• In an increasingly AI-driven world…
• What’s left that’s human?
• What can humans do better?
• Broken down into types of work (based on draft of my
paper), what can AI automate?
• Analytical work (how we are trained)
• Decision-making knowledge
• Optimizable work (operations)
• Management (monitoring of human resources)
• Processual work (how we work in the real world)
• Creative work
What happened to education

• How are we being educated?

• What happened in (your) schools?
• Will your education fit the future?

• Ken Robinson talk:

• https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_do_schools
_kill_creativity
• Other RSA talk
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U
How do we invent/innovate?
How we innovate/invent

• Traditional tech-push vs. market-pull

• Technology-driven (from lab)
• Market-driven
• Corporate product development processes (stage-gate)
• Creativity-created (idea followed by cognitive process)
• Serendipitous idea
• Creativity techniques
• Digital tech  applications
• Newer processes (emphasizing cognitive)
• Design thinking (adds creativity, but can be incremental)
• Our take: playful invention – inventors thought to play
around (tinkering, prototyping), passion (Johnson book)
Invention more recently involved design
thinking or some form of design process
• Invention through design thinking involves
• user-centered design, thinking as users, studying other
users
• (vs. as designers)
• Incremental due to basedEmbedding creativity in process
to validate it (with users), learn from it
• But design by itself became
• on corporate or users needs…
• Creativity was captured by rational needs
• Lost its cultural/domain contextual
•  This course emphasizes culture and domains, creativity
through play
 A typical design process (for comparison -
we subtract, add to this)
Source:
Stanford
Define a point Brainstorm d school
of view (i.e. Create artifacts
problem for tangible user
statement) experiences

Qualitative field
research yielding
insights into needs

Defining the Creating variety Implementing/ Learning (redefine

problem in solutions Validating idea problem or solution)
What is playful invention about
(original source of motivation for course)
History is mostly told as a long fight for the necessities,
not the luxuries (Johnson)
(Historically: “necessity is the mother of invention”)

You’ll find the future wherever people are

having the most fun *
Steven Johnson
Thesis of Johnson’s Wonderland book

• (This is) a history of play,…of the pastimes...of...fun (p. 11)

• This history is an account of less utilitarian pleasures;
habits and customs and environments that came into
being… (because) they seemed amusing… once some of
us escaped from the compulsory labor of subsistence (p.
13)

• (we want to see) Delight…as a driver of historical change

(end p. 10)
(based on Johnson’s introductory chapter)
Leads us to the questions

• How did inventors play in the past?

• Have to guess
• He also cites relationship between toys and invention

• For us, what’s the process

• An inventive process
• Cognitive aspects (types of thinking) of each (or key)
phases, connection to rest of the inventive process
Book asserts a history of inventions came
from inventors’ frivolous activities
• Inventors having fun
• “playing around” with ideas (making something)
• Inspired by other (related?) domains
• e.g. (by) Babbage’s own account, the passion for
mechanical thinking began with that moment of seduction
[as child, entranced by mechanical dolls]

• But we don’t know for sure, or whether the same will

work now, or works for us
Ideas from - some early inventive play was for
frivolous, yet useful devices
Inventions for wealth imagined (not done)

Banu Musa self-trimming lamp A portion of (Babbage’s) the

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banū_Mūsā difference engine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Babbage
(Introductory chap…)
…inventive play was for

Public entertainment (wealthier cities though

public could be relatively poorer)

Prague Astronomical Clock (1410) (In 1629 or

A copper engraving of the (Mechanical) Turk  1659 wooden statues were added, and figures
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk of the Apostles were added…in 1787–1791)
What is an inventive (and playful?) process?
A lens into innovation, perhaps play

https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_the_play
ful_wonderland_behind_great_inventions

WATCH
 A modifying the design process (we
subtract, add to this)
Brainstorm
(can happen
e.g. any stage)
Define Create artifacts
Themes, for tangible user
problems experiences Can test at
Any stage
(but try to be a
e.g. Ideate on little systematic)
objects
Define problems,
needs
Or create anew

Defining the Creating variety Implementing/ Learning (redefine

problem in solutions Validating idea problem or solution)
(additional lens on play…) The Kindergarten spiral
(Resnick) offers an alternative, play-like process
• Reflects a lot of what we seek to do … more on this later
• Mappable to design thinking’s phases
Our hypothesis-approach (adapts Johnson):
Play can help creativity and invention
To enact this, we have to
• Understand different conceptions of play,
• Understand how play works with creativity
• Also, different conceptions of creativity (e.g. general vs.
specific)

This year,
• Map to a design process to help us understand how to
improve/improvise the process
• We know the design process works, but it alone may not
lead to inventive ideas
e.g.s of invention

• Helsinki “choir”
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATXV3DzKv68
• Redesigning meetings
• Banksey’s Dismaland (later)

• Note
• Do not have to use entire design process but let me know
how you picked and chose phases, adapted it, or
replaced it
Playful Invention
What is play?

• What’s your definition of play?

What is play?

• One definition of play (applies to non-creative play):

• To engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather
than a serious or practical purpose.

• Note
• natural human activity without clear economic value
• not concrete or measurable (by what happens in your
daily reality)
Play

• Play as not only freeform, but

• Involving playing with “things”, e.g. objects, ideas etc.
• Safety (within safe boundaries)
• Freedom (e.g. to experiment, combine freely)
Creativity

• What is creativity to you?

• Give examples of what you did or found creative,
• How it came about

• Many ways of defining creativity or how it works

• Creativity is defined as something useful and novel
Creativity

• Creativity is just connecting things —Steve Jobs

• “Connecting” means trying new combinations
• In psychology, studied as conceptual combinations,
(theoretically described as conceptual blending)

• Typical creative process (mechanism level)

• Preparation, incubation, illumination, validation
• Typically, an “aha” moment or “a tool gives this”
How do creative individuals become creative,
and how is play a part of this?

• Need to know how creators become creative

• Passions
• Experimenting
• Breaking boundaries, rules, codes (by new combinations)

• Can be systematized by tools (e.g. visual prototyping),

but to a point…
• Need attitudes (what if)
Process: Playful invention as a process
involves
• Along with creativity, need a process of…
• Discovering, exploring new spaces (“white spaces”)
• Prototyping (creating artifacts) to play with
• Iteration
• Emotive (designing to be meaningful)

•  Very similar to design thinking

• How does being playful facilitate these?

Creativity as culturally-situated

• Culturally-situated meaning
• invented from culture (creators’ backgrounds)
• for culture (consumption, appreciable)
• away from culture (new culture)
Other things we emphasize in the
process
meanings

• Designers trace (find) meanings by emotions (positive)

• meaning can be deeper and detailed than just function or
taste (or aesthetics), e.g. saying a story has a
function/aesthetic is not enough? What else?
•  reflect (on meanings)
Reflection

• On
• exercises (reported back to class),
• in essay
• on project (process)

• In relation to
• theories and concepts
• Process, e.g. design (how is something improved,
transformed)
Projects: Timeline

• By week 2-3: form project teams

• Before mid-term break (week 7): first idea/domain (one
paragraph by email to me/TA) - feedback
• Just after mid-term break: attempted process (reported
on half page), prototype (in class) - feedback
• Last week(s): second variant
• Project completion: week 13

• Misc
• No final exam
• points for reading reflections, in-class participation
Summary

• Different approach to inventing  playful invention

• Involves understanding creativity, play
• Culturally-situated (“domains”)
• Role of play in creativity
• Enables exploration of new spaces by making new
connections (combinations), crossing boundaries
• Various aspects of play contribute (safety, passion etc.)
• Involves process
• Experimenting, changing, prototyping (playing with)
• Mapping onto, adapting (changing) design thinking
• Reflecting (to connect the dots)
Extra slides

• Provides detail on rest of course (will be referenced in

various later lectures)
 Process (again): Modifying the Kindergarten spiral
(Resnick) to reflect what we seek to do
• Also mappable to design thinking’s phases
• Where’s the culture, link to exploration, passion ?

Iterate (change)

Creativity tools (blending, what-

ifs…), mechanisms (enactment by
visual, linguistic etc. means)

Reflect on meanings
(including as we Prototyping (to
share experience) play as you
create)

Playing creates meaning

(track as “emotions”)
Kindergarten spiral, Resnick (MIT Media lab, creator of
Logo, Scratch constructivist learning tools)

A third lens:
There is a constant interplay between making new things in
the world and making new ideas in your head. As you make
new things, and get feedback from others (and from
yourself), you can revise, modify, and improve your ideas.
And based on these new ideas, you are inspired to make new
things. The process goes on and on, with making and learning
reinforcing one another in a never-ending spiral.(Resnick,
2013) 
(Lifelong Kindergarten, Resnick, MIT Press)

• Note:
• “ideas in head” aka imagination: how do we describe and activate it?
• Historically, visualizing or poetic descriptions (Romance era)
• Recently in cognition, ‘mental simulation’ - but it only gets us so far
Reflection via different academic
disciplines (class discussion, writings)
• History – what happened, how culture came to be
• ‘Play studies’ – what is play and how does it function
• Psychology – creativity, motivation
• Design – how to invent better
• Evolutionary theories – why we are what we are

• Plus, the different domains

• Different disciplines frame perspectives on these

activities