Pat Kane Speeches (Adapted to your Industry):

·        Play to Learn

·        The Need for a Play Ethic in Business and Society

·        Innovation: The Infinite Game of Play

·        A Play Ethic for Turbulent Times

·        Staying Adaptive and Creative – The Playful Way

·        Using Play To Maintain Morale And Performance

What is the Play Ethic:

   What would organizations be like which encouraged creativity, open-ended learning and experiment – the essence of play - as preferred characteristics for their employees or colleagues? What kinds of products, services and actions would these "players" generate?

   The play ethic is about having the confidence to be spontaneous, creative and empathetic across every area of your life - in relationships, in the community, in your cultural life, as well as paid employment. It's about placing yourself, your passions and enthusiasms at the centre of your world.

   By clearing space for activities that are pleasurable, voluntary and imaginative - that is, for play - you'll have better memory, sharper reasoning and more optimism about the future. As Brian Sutton-Smith, the dean of Play Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, says, 'The opposite of play isn't work. It's depression. To play is to act out and be willful, exultant and committed, as if one is assured of one's prospects.'

   So to call yourself a 'player', rather than a 'worker', is to immediately widen your conception of who you are and what you might be capable of doing. It is to dedicate yourself to realizing your full human potential; to be active, not passive.    Most of all, the play ethic forces us to think deeply about how we should pursue our pleasures - and how we reconcile that with our social duties.

   So, just like the work ethic, the play ethic is a set of feelings and principles. But the difference between the two is huge. Work is always the involuntary sector,  where men and women have to do what they have to do. But as Sartre says, play is what you do when you feel at your most free, your most voluntary. When every positive decision you make about your life carries both a risk, and a promise, of something new and challenging taking place. This is why the play ethic isn't 'the leisure ethic': the last thing it involves is slumped relaxation...

About Pat Kane:

   Pat Kane is a musician, journalist, author of The Play Ethic, as well as a social and political activist.  Since 2000, Pat Kane has been engaged by a wide variety of organizations and institutions to share his insights about technology, business, education and pop culture, based on his studies and writings about The Play Ethic. These engagements have focused on a number of key issues:

·        How can management motivate and inspire a "Net Generation" who are more guided by a 'play ethic' than a 'work ethic"?

·        How do you build a strong culture of creativity in an organization - and how can a complex understanding of play develop and strengthen that?

·        If your business or practice involves those who regard themselves as "playing" or "gaming" with your services or products, how can you become more literate in the power and potential of play, so you can bring them greater user/customer satisfaction?

   After leading Hue and Cry, a successful Scottish band, Pat's media career took off. He became a regular arts and ideas presenter and journalist on BBC Radio Scotland, interviewing cultural figures like Salman Rushdie, John Kenneth Galbraith, Noam Chomsky, Martin Amis, Doris Lessing, John Le Carre, David Attenborough, E.L. Doctorow, among many others. This culminated in two Radio Scotland series based in America, Kane Over America (1995) and Dollar Signs (1996), the former series winning him a 1996 UK Sony Radio Award (Bronze) for Radio Journalism. He worked at Microsoft, as music editor on one of their online magazines, Blizzard. 

   In 1997-1998, Pat edited two pages in the Saturday edition of the Herald newspaper, which he used to drive a think-tank called 'E2'. For this, he received what he regards as his best-ever literary review from a disgruntled Herald executive: 'That's journalism for the 31st century, never mind the 21st'.

   Pat embarked on his next major creative act - around the idea of 'The Play Ethic'. He had been exploring the concept in journalism since 1996 - observing the twin developments of the rise of the internet and New Labour, and wondering how the 'new work ethic' promised by Blair and Brown would sit with the 'playful interactions' afforded by digital culture. The Play Ethic book was released in 2004 to acclaim from thought-leaders like Douglas Rushkoff and Daniel Pink. The book's success has brought Pat considerable recognition. He was invited to become a Demos Associate in 2000; he was also appointed Visiting Fellow in the School of Management at York University, and became Britain's first-ever 'thinker in residence' at the Bristol Festival of Ideas in 2005. 

   Pat has delivered many keynote speeches and presentations about play to globally-significant organizations – including Lego, The BBC, The Economist, the New School in New York, Sydney Opera House, and Tony Blair's Cabinet Office.