Knock-off, rip-off, homage; copying, collecting; it all depends on your point of view. Did the Brothers Grimm steal stories from the people of the German countryside? I suppose there’s an argument that they did. Our goal with this book is not to claim authorship, but to collect the best games from wherever we can find them and source them appropriately. Since you seem to have a lot of deep knowledge here I hope you will join the wiki as an editor and help us to hash out the original sources of many of these games. So far it seems to be a more difficult undertaking than you might imagine. When trying to credit original sources we often find ourselves looking at a series of Russian dolls: We can source an original “author” or “designer” but there always seems to be a previous claimant lurking in the wings. We want to give credit where credit is due, but at the same time we don’t want to trace everything back to Leonardo Da Vinci or the cave painters at Lascaux. Any help you can offer is much appreciated.

It’s perhaps too late to respond to your questions, but they hit right before the holiday season and I haven’t had the chance. Thank you for them though; they are really good questions.

1.) The reason I encourage people to avoid going through a series of steps to arrive at a connection between two things is because, to me, creativity is about making associations we have NOT YET made. In other words, if we try to relate two concepts to each other by relying on pathways we’ve already trod, that is actually the antithesis of creativity in terms of the definition I was using. The purpose of the game is to take a creative leap, and I believe that leap starts to become baby steps of logic when we rely on “a” then “a+1” then “a+2” and so forth. This definition of creativity is echoed in much of Edward deBono’s work and it’s where I got my inspiration for this game.

2.) Einstein was very methodical in his calculations for general relativity but his methods didn’t take him to that final creative leap that gave him the realization that space is warped. His “methods” eventually kept leading him to the same, incorrect hypotheses. It was when he gave the methodical approach a break and played the violin that he would literally take a leap and arrive at a “truth” that he previously did not have access to, due to the limitations of being methodical. This is why I prefer not to describe our games as being “methodical.” They do offer a framework and a process for good work, but that is largely to set the stage for creative leaps to occur.

Thank you again for your questions,
Sunni

a short description how we play in a company:

given is a large Sea Map (drawn by me), dimensions 2,40 m x 1,80 m. It contains several islands and lands. All the descriptions came from meetings of employees, like “Land of Conventions”, “Island of Communication”, “Treasure Island”, “Island of Taboos”, “Towers of Experts”, “Vulcano of Creativity” and so on.

The map has been tested several times, and slowly some rules are developing:

Somebody brings in a theme, a problem, a task, formulated in the metaphorical language of Sea fare, described as a Scenario. He/she asks some others to pick up some roles in this Scenario. They decide how long they want to play. Every player gets a little figure to place on a shore or on a ship, and there they go!

What they are not clear about yet is the role of a host, I think it is essential, but they have to find it out themselves.

Every play is documented in a Log Book. So by and by new groups coming toplay can use some experiences of others – or not.

It is amazing how fast the inner children in the grown up players take over.

Has anybody made experiences with similar games? I would love to exchange views!

Rino

-Rob D.

I certainly agree with your second point: that method is integral to the creative process. If it weren’t, I agree, there would be no point in writing this book!

As far as your first point, I am not sure why Sunni feels that going through a set of steps isn’t creative, so I tend to agree with your point. Hopefully Sunni will clarify what she means there.

Thanks for commenting!

1) Why is it not creative to attempt to “go through a series of steps to relate the word to the product or service”? I recognize that you cannot have every person playing the game do this for every sticky note, because sooner or later, those paths will certainly have already been established, but this process of attempting to find connections between things is a huge part of the creative process, isn’t it? Maybe I’m just misunderstanding.

2) The creative process often *can* be methodical. I hate to see “creative” and “methodical” being held up as opposites. Creativity usually ends up breaking the norm, pushing boundaries, establishing new connections, etc. But the most creative people I know (and they are crazy creative) are *all* methodical people. Anyway, isn’t playing a game a method?

Those things said, I’m definitely going to use this game at work. It’s a nice way to expand the creative capital a team is working with!