Susan Savage-Rumbaugh
At TED in 2004 Susan introduced herself to the audience by telling them of her work with Bonobo’s, chimps that are only found in the Congo and are rarely seen in zoo’s because of their sexual behavior, which is “too human like for most of us to be comfortable with”
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/susan_savage_rumbaugh_on_apes_that_write.html
Bonobos live in an egalitarian and very empathic society where sexual behaviors are used to minimize or negotiate conflict, communications and societal rulings. Susan proposed that once upon a time we humans had a very similar society but eventually began to segment our lives so that everything was ‘boxed’ or located and had a specific role.
Susan suggests that when we were naughty monkeys our ‘play’ was the key to our evolution. However, once fear crept in, we devolved into less than optimal creatures and we now spend more time and money destroying our achievements than building new ones. The best line in the 44th inaugural speech “you shall be judged by what you build, not destroy”. Obama.
I love listening to Susan speak about the work she does with Bonobos. She is a grey haired, faded jean jacket-wearing explorer and she reminds me that the trappings of business often eclipse the potential excitement of our job. The offices, the modular furniture (please tell me the moron that invented modular furniture came to a sticky end), the meeting rooms, the suits, the hierarchy of titles and the petty politics all serve to eclipse our power to play for a living and think creatively, to unlock our power of collaboration and above all to look fear in the face and “strive on to finish the work we are in” (Abe). At work, we are not playful because we are fearful.
A case in point illustrates this. We have the opportunity to work on a cross agency project that could revolutionalize how a major brand does business. The client has asked for creative thinking and a 'whole new approach'. We have agreed to regroup and come up with a new approach that illustrates creative thinking. So what has happened? The person in charge is desperate to hold on to some illusionary power and will not listen to the large ideas because they challenge their notion of control structures. Each group has to do what it has always done, boil it down to its most consumable function, and that will be served up as the new cross agency approach to creative thinking. It’s boring, uninspired and is typical of someone who has lost the ability to play with others.
“To stimulate creativity, one must develop the childlike inclination for play . . .” — Albert Einstein
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