According to a new study, unsupervised children are more active and more social. I mention this because in my forthcoming book, Jump the Curve, one of the strategies I encourage executives interested in “innovating into the future” to employ is what I call the power of play. In other words, I encourage leaders to allow their employees to engage in “mandatory recess”—or unstructured play. A number of companies, including Google, Genentech and 3M already do this; but I think even more should.
The benefits are multiple. As the study suggests, kids who aren’t supervised play with more children. In this same way employees who have more unstructured time might also interact with other employees. In turn, this could lead to new insights, ideas and discoveries.
The study also found that unsupervised kids “meandered” more. Employees need to do the same thing. They must be free to make serendipitious discoveries—and they can’t easily do this if they are always toting the company line.
For other related articles, I’d encourage you to read the following posts:
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
