In this special episode, Vivian Forssman of Royal Roads University interviews Strategic Play Founder and doctoral student Jacqueline Lloyd Smith. Gain a deeper understanding of how play—using 3D tabletop models—can be highly useful to bulletproof any strategy, especially when the stakes are high in the face of impending disaster. 

Matt is a PhD student and fellow at Purdue University bringing play to academics. We met at a creativity conference after he couldn’t resist the allure of a session that had him asking: What the duck?!

Mike, owner of 3Dynamic, is a pro in the industrial and mechanical design industry. Would you believe that, as a child, a particular line of LEGO® kits set him on that path?

A self-professed recovering academic, Kim is Co-Director of Innovation Labs at The Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. With a background in literature, she’s found a unique position to pursue her love of creativity. What would you expect if your manager sent your team to participate in an innovation and problem-solving workshop at an art museum?

From tech pro to retiree making prosciutto and hot sauce to joining up with a group of young folks in a startup for safety innovation in the mining sector. Yep. Sounds like Mike’s just had your typical career path.

Jeff, LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® Methods facilitator and executive coach extraordinaire, loves a good LEGO® epiphany. 

Holding the title of Senior Business Consultant at Intel Flex doesn’t sound like there’s much room for creativity, does it? Well guess what? Sarah did it. Find out how she managed to carve out her own place as a Creative Facilitator and Visual Storyteller at this tech giant.

Jeremy is a LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® methods facilitator and enthusiastic storyteller who used to be a U.S. Navy Pilot who now works for Google and once co-authored a book called The Rise of the Naked Economy:  How to Benefit from the Changing Workplace.  Let’s just hope if that office is using LEGO, folks are at least wearing shoes!

We met Sara when she was a Red Shirt – what’s that?! – at a creative conference in Sestri Levante, Italy. After a chance run-in at the train station, she spent a day playing our tour guide in Milan, which led to a lasting friendship and creative partnership.

Van rhymes with fun! And she is also a seriously entertaining individual. Van has forged a unique path in the business world, eschewing traditional training approaches for highly creative and hands-on methods where she urges people to follow their curiosity. Let’s see where that leads.

Much of Scott’s career has been in healthcare, where he works with individuals to up their leadership game. What does that mean in a clinical setting? Scott’s recent focus has been on working with organizations seeking to create a patient experience comprised of compassion and empathy. If you have been through a serious illness, whether your own or that of someone close to you, you know that a positive experience can make a world of difference. 

When discussing generational divides in the workplace, millennials get a lot of flack for being impossible to work with. So we brought our resident millennial, Stephen, into the studio to interrogate him—we mean, to explore what we might be missing. 

What do you get when you combine boundless enthusiasm for innovation, LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® certification, a flair for theatrics, and a tube of red lipstick? Susan Newhouse, facilitation dynamo, who once helped the Ferrero chocolate folks blast off.

Dr. Kasra Khorasani puts a unique spin on group psychotherapy by bringing in the LEGO® duck to help patients click, relate, and validate. And settle in for a fascinating lesson on neuroscience, as the good doctor talks about mirror neurons and how they make live life more interesting. 

Colonel Trew entered the Air Force in 1999 after graduating from the U.S. Air Force Academy with a Bachelor of Science degree. After flying trainers and fighter aircraft for the first half of his career, he has spent the last decade focused on innovations in military education, strategy, and leadership. This has included a year studying at the Air Force school for strategists, earning a PhD in the history of technology, coaching innovation teams across the DoD, and, most recently, leading the design team for Space Force education. He has extensive training in facilitation and design thinking and is also certified as a performance coach, personal trainer, and an Ironman triathlon coach. Col Trew, who goes by the callsign "TOGA," is currently the Vice Commandant of Squadron Officer School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. The views he expresses here are his personal views and do not reflect the official policy of - or endorsement by - the US Air Force, Department of Defense or the US Government. 

Have you ever had the urge to tell someone, “Wow, that’s one ugly baby!” Imagine the creativity it would take to do that so tactfully the person didn’t even realize that’s what you meant. Now how does this relate to government and innovation, you might ask? 

We feel privileged to be friends and collaborators with Dr. Steve Ralph, Pepperdine University professor and founder of the EPIC Impact Society. Academics and LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® are such a perfect match, especially in the hands of individuals bursting with ingenious ideas.