Play/gamification

Research on play has shown that it is a way of safely learning other people’s deviance. Play is a way of engineering experiences that reveal assumptions that we then question, unleashing unpredictable results

While play enables one to step into uncertainty and thrive, play alone isn’t a complete tool, as much as a childlike approach to life can be generative for the brain. To survive during evolution, innovation needs more than creation. We also need principle V: Deviate with intention—not just for the sake of deviance (though there can be value in that, too, in terms of a random search strategy). This is essential, and we have a clear example of its significance. What do you get if you add intention to play?
SCIENCE.

start simple (few dimensions), add complexity (more dimensions), and then refine (lose dimensions) through trial and error… and repeat

One must lead with creativity and follow with efficiency… and repeat, not the other way around and not in tandem

Our five senses need contrast in order to make sense of meaningless information; otherwise it stays meaningless

Transitions bring uncertainty: the transition from youth to adulthood, from a familiar home to a new home, single life to married life (and often back again), childless life to parent life, working life to retired life. The key nuance is that innovation moves within the “space between.” It is movement between that is innovation: to be innovative is not to live at the edge of chaos, but to be at the edge of chaos on “average.” What this means in practice is that you must know which phase you’re in at any given moment. The greatest innovators are rarely individuals, but rather groups that embody this tension between creativity and efficiency. In particular, one potentially powerful pairing inside an ecology of innovation is the novice and the expert.

letting them run in the dark (to explore), while providing walls that keep them from running too far, and letting them know with certainty that when they hit a wall and fall down they will be picked back up. Since what a two-year-old wants is to both explore and be held at the same time (as does a teenager, and as does an adult… all of us)

Parenting is about letting children learn how to move between go and stop by building their own history of trial and error, not by adopting yours.

the courage to occupy spaces of uncertainty