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All work
and no play … makes for an innovation dead-end
New research
by London Business School professor Babis Mainemelis and doctoral
candidate Sarah Ronson shows how the best ideas are born in fields
of play and how to ingrain more time and space for creativity within
organisational settings.
Next time you
spend a little more than your lunch hour playing with your colleagues,
don't feel too guilty. Professor Babis Mainemelis of London Business
School has identified two fundamental ways in which play has a positive
impact on creativity in companies. In a new paper to be published
in Research in Organizational Behavior in August 2006, Professor
Mainemelis and phd student Sarah Ronson focus on two manifestations
of play in organisations. The first is play as a form of engagement
with work: when employees turn their core work into play, play facilitates
the cognitive, affective, and motivational processes that creativity
requires. The second is play as a form of diversion from work, which
is much more than water cooler gossiping. Play as a diversion, argue
Mainemelis and Ronson, fosters creativity in a peripheral way by
creating a psychological and social-relational climate that is conducive
to creativity.
Current normal
work environments can be seen to stifle creativity. But should we
worry about this? Work is what one gets paid for, and productivity
surely is key? Apparently not. According to Professor Mainemelis
creativity is increasingly important to companies, and not only
those in the so-called 'creative' industries. Encouraging creativity
and innovation via play is beneficial on many levels: it can generate
creative ideas for new products or processes; it can calibrate an
organisation's ability to flexibly respond to future challenges;
and it can also contribute to the creation of a social context that
stimulates creativity in the first place.
So what can
organisations do? Professor Mainemelis argues that companies can
nurture play in three ways: by creating a playful work environment;
by providing freedom, time, and other resources that allow employees
to select and turn their work into play; and by delineating a dedicated
organisational time and space in which employees feel safe to play
freely with new ideas that may not seem at first useful in generating
new products or processes. Mainemelis and Ronson observe that some
companies have started to recognize the power of play. Companies
like IDEO and Pixar have created very playful work environments,
while companies like Google, Gore, and 3M, encourage people to use
up to 20% of their work time to play freely with new (even strange)
ideas which may lead up to new products or processes.
For example,
the manufacturer Gore's 'Elixir' non-breakable guitar-wires were
invented by an engineer who used his "free-time" to improve
the gear cables of his mountain bike. Then he asked how these cables
could be used to develop less brittle guitar strings. He teamed
up with an engineer who had invented Gore's 'Glide' non-breakable
dental floss and with a second colleague who was an amateur musician.
They played together with this idea for 3 years without being subjected
to any form of direction or control. Today, Gore controls 35% of
the acoustic guitar strings market, although Gore had absolutely
nothing to do with the music market prior to this invention. In
fact, the Elixir guitar wires were invented in one of Gore's medical
product plants! Mainemelis and Ronson argue that play is the only
form of behaviour that can lead to such unexpected and surprising
discoveries.
For more information
about Professor Mainemelis's research, or to speak with him directly,
please contact their press
office.
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