How Play and Humor Fuel Innovation and Design

Dr. Barry Kudrowitz, Professor of Product Design at the University of Minnesota and Author of Sparking Creativity: How Play and Humor Fuel Innovation and Design joins Enterprise Radio. This episode of Enterprise Radio is on association with the Author Channels. Listen to host Eric Dye & guest Dr. Barry Kudrowitz discuss the following: I think we all want to innovate and we understand that it is a good thing for society, but how could humor lead to innovation in serious disciplines and industries? Would that just not lead to silly ideas? Play, like humor, is also something that tends to be associated with children and silliness and not business or work. How is play something that can be harnessed in industry to lead to innovation? Is creativity something that you can learn to be better at or are some people just “not creative”? If so, what are some simple things that people can do to improve their creative abilities? In the book, you have several chapters on improvisation. What are the connections between improv with creativity, innovation and design? Throughout the book you discuss many different methods of idea generation and have an entire chapter dedicated to how you run a brainstorming session.  What advice do you have for people who want to facilitate an idea generation session? Barry Kudrowitz, PhD, is a professor of product design and department head in the College of Design at the University of Minnesota, USA. There, he founded and directed the product design program from 2011–2021. Kudrowitz received his PhD from the Mechanical Engineering Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), studying humor, creativity, and idea generation. Kudrowitz is interested in how creativity is perceived, evaluated, and learned. He has years of experience working with the toy industry and has taught toy design for over a decade. Kudrowitz co-designed a Nerf toy, an elevator simulator that was in operation at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C., and a ketchup-dispensing robot that was featured on the Martha Stewart Show. He is  the author of Sparking Creativity: How Play and Humor Fuel Innovation.