How To Innovate Laughing More
Innovation is not only about hard work but also having fun with it.
Michael Lewis explains in his magnificent book "The Undoing Project" the friendship between Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky and how this friendship led towards a Nobel prize.
Like all the great friendship and discovery stories, their story shows us two researchers who have fun working together. In fact, their colleagues were surprised when they walked beside their door and heard laughs and noise instead of silence and seriousness. But from this joyful environment, some significant discoveries in behavioural economics were made. Irv Biederman put it this way: "most of the advances in science don't come from a eureka moment, but from a simple 'hmmm, that's funny.'"
Light years from this kind of result, I've always tried to play along with my family, friends and clients. Indeed, a few weeks ago, I sent my weekly newsletter, The Proactivist, to my 3.000+ subscribers only with the text of it: no images, no social media, no links, and no buttons. It was the result of a game with a marketing consultant who defended the idea of a well-designed newsletter above the main content of it. I played the game and got lots of good responses from my subscribers, so I've made some changes to my newsletter to make it more valuable for the reader.
Ask yourself: what are you playing at? are you enjoying it?
© Oriol López 2022