Creativity and innovation: The crucial role of play

Sir Patrick Bateson

This article explains why play is essential to developing creativity, innovativeness and productivity in both children and adults.

Creativity and innovation: The crucial role of play

Sir Patrick BatesonCambridge University

In the course of writing a book about play, my colleague Paul Martin and I were struck by how often playfulness facilitates creativity and hence innovation in both the natural world and in human society.

'Play' as used by biologists and psychologists is a broad term denoting almost any activity that is not 'serious' or 'work'. This way of characterising play led to the false conclusion that it wasn't a serious topic for study. Children spend a great deal of time playing when allowed to do so....

WARC subscribers can sign in to keep reading

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands