Kids on Collaboration and Innovation

This is the kids’ corner today! I shall highlight three posts that address children’s behaviors that apply to collaboration and innovation.

From 13 communication and life tips that children teach us:

1. Be completely present in the moment
2. Allow for spontaneity
3. Move your body! To move is to live and to grow
4. Play and be playful
5. Make mistakes
6. Do not concern yourself with impressing people
7. Show your enthusiasm
8. Remain open to possibilities and "crazy" ideas
9. Be insanely curious, ask loads of questions
10. Know that you are a creative being
11. Smile, laugh, enjoy
12. Slow down
13. Encourage others

Seth Godin writes Childish vs. Childlike:

“Childlike makes a great scientist.
Childish produces tantrums.

Childlike brings fresh eyes to marketing opportunities.
Childish rarely shows up as promised.

Childlike is fearless and powerful and willing to fail.
Childish is annoying.

Childlike inquires with a pure heart.
Childish is merely ignored.”

Kids build ’bots; ’bots build teamwork shows an example where kids think for themselves, collaborate, co-design robots and have fun. The post is about sixty-three teams of middle-school students ages 9 to 14 competing in the 11th annual First Lego League Competition.

These behavioral attributes relate nicely to an earlier post in which we discussed that effective collaboration happens at the intersection of assertive and cooperative behaviors.

What do you see in a child’s behavior, that is applicable to collaboration and innovation?

Update on 25 December 2010 by Lokesh Datta

See Related Posts:

• Collaboration = Cooperative Behavior + Assertive Behavior
• If You Can’t Pass the Ball, You Can’t play!
• When Ideas Have Sex: The Case for Collaboration
• Innovation Through Collaboration
• Team Brainstorming and Innovation in 2010
• Creativity as a Process That We can Learn

Comments

[Lorie Vela]

What I love about kids collaborating is that they engage to a project, a goal, and they don't care about individuality or having to impress others, they just want to accomplish their tasks with their teams, and with their great imagination they are not afraid of anything, a brainstorming with kids is the most refreshing and fascinating!

I simply love the way children play with others, how easily they assign roles and enhance fun! Somehow we, adults, have lost that insight of things we want to achieve.

Thanks for the post.