OVERVIEW
Breaking the Rules / Safe/Danger
March 12/13, 2009Mission: Fostering innovation, new ideas and change
Moderator: Jeff Gordinier, Details; author, X Saves the World
Breaking the rules ignites the creative process and was discussed as a strategy for innovation. A “conversational journey away from safety,” Breaking the Rules explored case studies about dynamic environments and experiences that foster innovation through risk. Art, design, science, architecture, cooking, gaming, storytelling, entrepreneurship, and democracy evolve through a healthy injection of rule breaking. The phrase “breaking the rules” was discussed as part of the personal creative process that often defines the heroic rule breaker: "When everyone says "no," you know you're doing something right." Another participant offered, “Your thinking. That’s a problem.” Within the gaming community, rule breaking was defined as “navigating a rule based system in innovative ways.” Rules are essential parameters for rule breaking.
Rule breaking informs strategies applied by companies to promote innovation and leadership. It can be offered as a creative process methodology for clients. Rule breaking can define a course of action. As Gordinier concluded, “Breaking the rules – or at least adjusting the rules, or at least allowing for enough legal, aesthetic, and societal flexibility so that rules can evolve with the passage of time – is the way we move forward. It’s a natural process, although not a process devoid of friction.”