Future Here Now: What innovation actually requires. No, not that. This.

Signals

In this issue:

• Time for Big Tech to Stop Stifling Innovation

• Neuroplasticity Healing

• Play and Get Messy

---

I used to joke that the only thing my son needed to create something was some sticks and the contents of my kitchen. A lot of which ended up outside in the dirt at some point or another.

If I had been super uptight about my measuring cups and salad forks and mixing bowls, I would have had a much cleaner kitchen, fewer weird scratches on my pots, and I wouldn’t still find the occasional kebob skewer out in the backyard, years later.

But I would have also had a very different kid. One who, perhaps, didn’t have the creativity and curiosity that he has. Or who felt that he couldn’t act on his curiosities. Maybe he would have been afraid to ask for the tools he needed to do what was in his gut. Maybe he would have been smaller, intellectually and emotionally, than he has become.

As the video below describes incredibly well, creating/innovating requires three core things: something to manipulate, some modest constraints (think a measuring cup, not a backhoe), and, perhaps most importantly, permission to play. To explore, to try and fail.

It’s no surprise that big corporations – and so many of us – generate so few true innovations anymore. We have been taught by the Industrial Era that we have to be efficient, that we can’t waste, that we have to cut the fat.

But the fat, literally and figuratively, is the brain food.

How do we rebuild our own resilience – our ability, and permission to play?

---

If you’re a free subscriber, this is one of those newsletters with the pesky paywall. But it doesn’t have to be that way. If you find this content useful, or insightful, or brain-rewiring, you can get even more every month for the change in your car seats. More Signals you probably missed, more original insights, and more tools and opportunities to help you welcome the future that’s unfolding right now - not be afraid of it.

How about you give it a try?

---

Production Note: the links to the original articles are in the headlines of each article.

Time for Big Tech to Stop Stifling Innovation

This article is a must read:

The truth is, big tech companies have been stifling innovation for decades, and it’s time to have a candid conversation