Playing to Creativity

“Tiger Mom” is a pussycat compared with the latest parent making headlines over her child rearing values.

New Yorker Nicole Imprescia is suing her daughter’s private pre-school for failing to properly prepare the 4-year-old to ace the admission test that would open the doors to an elite private school, and eventually an Ivy League university. She wasn’t happy to see her daughter merely learning about shapes and colours and playing with kids as young as 2.

Ivy Leaguer Amy Chua, a Yale law professor, jumpstarted the child rearing debate earlier this year during her promo tour for her new book espousing raising children with very strict and enforced rules. Learning by rote is embraced, as is homework centred on repetitive drills.

The debate over how we raise our kids does have important implications if we consider that we are likely impacting our country’s standard of living. It’s time to move this education discussion to the business pages.

If countries hope to prosper, they need to drive creative capabilities in our future business professionals. The building blocks of innovation are, well, building blocks.

Encouraging children, through play to use their imaginations is fundamental in nurturing creativity, which in turn breeds innovation and leadership.

Innovators know this. It is no coincidence that some of the world’s most creative organizations fall over themselves to make sure their employees have fun and play on the job.

One of my firm’s core areas is designing workspaces for growing, innovative businesses. For many of their business leaders a key goal is to offer employees a place to work that is fun, deliberately playful and inspires creativity.

But as Hilary Stout at the New York Times postulates, “recent studies and stats are suggesting the culture of play in North America is vanishing.”

Let’s all do our part and turn off our computers once in a while – and start playing to  reignite our imaginations once again.

Please pass the Lego.