At work in the toybox

Abstract

Key companies and commentators on the new economy have identified play as a crucial aspect of entrepreneurship and commercial innovation. We will argue that play and place are inseparable in these discourses: from places such as Google’s headquaters (HQ) – the Googleplex, with its ball pits and slides – to schemes and practices such as LEGO Serious Play, children’s play and sites of play are taken as the model for, and wellspring of, imagination and creativity, modes and spaces of thinking and experimentation that can invigorate and innovate the adult worlds of cultural and technological production. Taking as case studies Google’s reimagining of cultural practices of play, and LEGO Serious Play’s deployment of playful experimentation for corporate/therapeutic ends, this article argues that to understand the possibilities of playful working places, it is necessary to question the generally uncritical assumptions about the character and potential of play itself that underpin these initiatives.