Constraints, Playfulness & Ethics: 3 Lessons for Leading in the AI Age | Dr Vlad Glaveanu

Dr Vlad Glaveanu shares three essential lessons for executives navigating AI: embrace constraints, foster playfulness, and keep ethics at the centre.

Read more on: https://arkaro.com/ai-leadership-creativity-constraints/

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How should leaders think about AI and creativity? In this episode, Mark Blackwell speaks with Dr Vlad Glaveanu, Professor of Psychology at Dublin City University, founder of the Possibility Studies Network, and editor of the Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Possible.

Vlad introduces Possibility Studies — a new field exploring how individuals and societies engage with what could be — and explains why constraints are essential to creativity rather than obstacles to it. He makes the case for "slow AI", arguing that the waiting and incubation that drive real innovation are at risk in our rush for instant answers.

The conversation covers:

• Why there is no creativity without constraints 
• The ethics of possibility — just because something could be, should it be? 
• How AI is reshaping our conception of creativity 
• The "bad idea brainstorm" technique for building psychological safety 
• What managers should prioritise when entering new markets or launching products

Vlad closes with three takeaways for any executive managing a team in the age of AI: welcome constraints and resistance, foster playfulness and trust, and never delegate to AI the business of humans.

Guest: Dr Vlad Glaveanu

• Professor of Psychology, Dublin City University
• Adjunct Professor, University of Bergen
• Founder & President, Possibility Studies Network
• Author of Wonder and Creativity: A Very Short Introduction

Resources mentioned:

• Possibility Studies Network: possibilitystudies.net
• Possibility Bots (Ron Beghetto)

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Guest Introduction
• 5:02 What Is Possibility Studies
• 9:50 Constraints As Catalysts For Creativity
• 16:27 Enabling vs Blocking Constraints
• 23:42 Ethics Of Possibility And Responsibility
• 28:17 Futures Studies Compared With Possibility Studies
• 33:47 Systems Thinking And Ecologies Of Possibility
• 40:12 AI As Tool, Hybrid Creativity, Limits

Transcript

Vlad Glaveanu: 1:34

I feel we've broken way too many things. And this is another stream of work within possibility studies, the ethics of possibility. This idea that if something could be, does it mean that it should be? I'm working with many colleagues, but with Ron Baghetto from Arizona State, we're talking about slow AI. From a creativity and slash possibility perspective, it's interesting that we should not jump to solutions that quickly. A lot of creativity work, innovation work shows that actually it's the waiting and the incubation that makes things grow and take a different turn.

Mark Blackwell: 2:15

Hi, this is Mark Blackwell. Welcome to the Arkaro Insights Podcast. This is the show where we help business executives with tools and techniques to thrive in a complex world. Today we are delighted to have as our guest Vlad Glaveanu. Vlad is a professor of psychology at the Dublin City University in Ireland and also an adjunct professor at the Centre for Science and Learning and Technology in the University of Bergen in Norway. He's the founder and president of the Possibility Studies Network and editor of the journal Possibility Studies and Society. In a 2022 manifesto, he established Possibility Studies, a new field dedicated to exploring how individuals and societies engage with what could be. This research focuses on possibilities across psychological, social and cultural domains. His work investigates creativity, imagination, and innovation. He is the editor-in-chief of the Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Possible and co-developed the possibility of thinking scale, which measures aspects like awareness, excitement, and exploration of possibility.

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Dr.

Mark Blackwell: 3:35

Glaveanu is also known for his research on AI and education and the impact of generative AI on creativity. His published books include Wonder, The Extraordinary Power of an Ordinary Experience, and Creativity, a very short introduction. Vlad, delighted to have you. Welcome to the show.

Vlad Glaveanu: 3:57

Thank you so much, Mark. Very happy to be here.

Mark Blackwell: 4:00

We've got a lot of terms that came up in that introduction. Too many.

Vlad Glaveanu: 4:04

Too many, perhaps.

Mark Blackwell: 4:05

Let's see what we can work our way through. I'm guessing maybe some people in the audience have heard of something about future studies. Some might even be able to define what that means at some level. Can you tell me what is possibility studies? Just maybe answering if you can and what it might mean for a business person.

Vlad Glaveanu: 4:23

An elevator pitch of possibility studies. Well, listen, you know, possibility studies is something that speaks to our human existence, I think, first and foremost, because as I like to say, you know, we as human beings, and I'm not disregarding animals here, we're just talking about humans for a moment. We live in at the same time within the present, within the immediate, and we can bring other things into our present, things that are not here, things that are virtual, things that are possible. You know, we can imagine the past, we can think towards futures, we can look at alternatives, we can think in terms of as if, what if thinking processes. So the possibility studies is really like a big umbrella that brings together people who study agency, creativity, imagination, improvisation, serendipity, counterfactuals, all wonder, curiosity, you know, futures thinking, utopia, dystopia, and the list goes on. What do we all have in common? It's this idea of studying, you know, the human drive, the propensity we have to engage with something beyond our immediate environment. And that has huge implications, I mean, for business, family life therapy. And I'm sure we're going to explore some of them here.

Mark Blackwell: 5:31

Interesting. So I've read about this a little bit, and there's lots of techniques, and I know you've got some key questions. But you know, typical business executive at the moment, they're thinking, well, I've got to create so much more with so much less. You know, there are constraints which just block and appear to impede everything that I do. In other podcasts, we're beginning to explore the idea that constraints are at least a key to innovation. So in your world, how do constraints work in helping possibility happen?

Vlad Glaveanu: 6:03

That's a beautiful question. And I think it goes at the heart of one misconception. I mean, there are always misconceptions, aren't there, about things. But one of the things to dispel would be the idea that the possible, the opposite of the possible, is the real. And I think this is where, you know, business people, but other people as well might think possibility study sounds fascinating and, you know, children's dreaming and fiction and fantasy. But actually, it's much, much more than that. Of course, it covers some of those wild possibilities. But in reality, possibility is about reality. It's about how we engage with reality. As a psychologist, you know, we I know, and this is not my research, but as we perceive things, as we remember things, we infuse them with possibilities. We never have like a photographic memory or even a photographic perception of reality. We fill in the gaps, right? So we do that at the most micro level, not to mention a conversation like you and I are having that is fundamentally open to what could be. I don't know what I'm gonna say in five words from now. You know, I presume we're gonna talk about the possible, but there is this openness to human existence. So, you know, one thing about constraints is that they bring reality to the fore. And I think perceiving, recognizing, navigating, and appreciating constraints is part of what I call, you know, wider possibilities literacy. So I think we meet very, very well in this area.

Mark Blackwell: 7:21

So you got some questions like to help explore and the idea constraints are important to know where the boundaries are in any problem. Right. But one thing I think we artificially create boundaries and constraints where they don't exist. In an earlier podcast, we talked about the playground paradox, which is where if you put children on a playground without a border, they will spend their time on the swings. But as soon as you put a fence around the playground, they know where the limits are, they have broken down that artificial constraint and it's gone to the limits. Does that resonate with any of the work that you do?

Vlad Glaveanu: 7:58

Absolutely. I mean, it goes back to me being a creativity researcher first and foremost, if you want. And I continued to be that after 15, 20 years of studying creativity, there is no creativity without constraints. Because as you just said, you know, I sometimes do this with students in class. I tell them, draw something versus draw a house, you know, and even adding a tiny, tiny constraint guides a bit the imagination. People can get blocked without constraints. And there is also, I should mention, a fascinating line of work in creativity research, in possibility studies around self-imposed constraints. I mean, the greatest creators and any creator really knows the value of kind of guiding their own work. For example, you know, that there was a time when I collaborated with colleagues who work with photographers, and there is digital photography and analog and you know, the old school versus, you know, all the new stuff where you see your photo. And some of the greatest photographers would want to go back to the old technique, which is kind of impractical if you think about it. Like they don't even know what they've they've shot until they develop it. But there is something in the resistance of that material that actually makes the process different and and you know, more authentic, more creative in many ways.

Mark Blackwell: 9:07

Interesting. So that sort of helps us create the the the box, the boundaries. But how what techniques do you have like the what if exercise to free from things that aren't helpful, maybe?

Vlad Glaveanu: 9:19

Yeah, well, exactly. You know, in in uh in other work with a colleague uh Katrin Ltromp, uh who's in the US, we we talk about these kind of more enabling constraints, the exactly the things that I was talking to you about, just setting setting the ground, the boundary that helps us understand what is and move beyond. You know, if there is no boundary, we don't know when we're actually being creative because we don't know when we cross the boundary. So it is an important thing. But then you have these other constraints that we also have that we internalize that basically block us from ever going beyond what is. So I think you know, there are different techniques. One of them obviously is playfulness. I mean, I'm gonna I'm gonna probably mention this word again and again, but there is something so deep and powerful about play. When we hear again of play as adults, as people working in business, and not only we think of children, this is children's, you know, children's stuff. But actually, playfulness is again a human trait. And we're being playful again right now in our conversation. And we use humor, we we make things more relative, more open, more flexible, and we allow ourselves to make mistakes. One of the things that are just fundamental for creativity, innovation, possibility thinking is this idea of risk taking, you know, managed risk, fast intelligent failure, as some people would, you know, formalize it. But this idea of allowing yourself for things to go wrong and to learn from that. And I think with constraints, you need to push back, you need to add and take out constraints. And um it's just becomes fascinating as a process.

Mark Blackwell: 10:45

I am very much agree with you. We I mean we talk about psychological safety and we we talk about you know faster failing something. But the reality is there are some things that you do in business where you cannot fail. Of course. The consequences of failure are pretty big. If you sit build a factory that's uh and build a machine that uh doesn't work because of its poor design, that's a lot of money down the drain. So trying to, you know, that I'm more and more interested in recognizing that we're always learning, like children, and finding situation where we can learn skills in experiential learning or game playing to do that in a safe zone where if it goes wrong, it's fine, but rather prepares you for going live, as it were.

Vlad Glaveanu: 11:32

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it it reminds me of, isn't it, the Silicon Valley motto, one of them move fast and break things. And and suddenly I feel we've broken way too many things. Um, and this is another stream of work within Possibility Studies, the ethics of possibility. It's this idea that if something could be, does it mean that it should be? I think there is almost like a bias in in the way we think that if we imagine something, then we have to make it happen or we we should get it. And adding to that playfulness, I mean, another stream of my work, because I I come from social psychology, which is a bit atypical for people looking at creativity, you know, it's all in the mind and individual brains and so on. But I'm really interested in self-other relations, the way we work in groups in society. So for me, it's always important, even as we play and especially as we create, explore the possible, to understand that it is a joint endeavor. Even when we do it alone, we we're never, you know, completely outside of society and culture. So the existence of other people, the fact that we create with and for others, we play with others, you know, gives us a sense of responsibility or should give us a sense of responsibility. You know, kids care for each other. That's how that the play goes on. Play was would all start, you know, stopping violence. So I think there is a secondary lesson there, as you said, around responsible playing or careful playing. You know, we should we should be careful because that's how you started, you know, careful with how much you break, but careful with double L as well.

Mark Blackwell: 12:56

So yeah, so I'm going back to that idea of how does compare and trust future studies with possibility studies.

Vlad Glaveanu: 13:03

Yes. Yeah. Well, thank you for asking because I'm asked all of these things by many people, and I do have an answer. Actually, I even have a short published piece on that. But the thing is, the future studies is a fantastic field. It's it's much older, you know, it's kind of post-World War II where people were worried about the bomb and everything. And look at us now uh where we are. I think possibility studies is kind of reincarnation of some of those things because it came about, not fully came about, but it it really started off through the pandemic, which is an age of impossibility or wild possibility, you know, something you could never imagine could happen. So I think there is already a historical marker almost of when humanity hits its, you know, the hardship, the biggest hardships, we start re-engaging with these human traits. So the difference is, or one of the differences, future studies obviously is a lot about the future. I think it is in the name. While in possibilities we expand, the future is a complete area of possibility, but the past is also something we play with creatively. Think about alternative histories, think about post-truth in the dark side of possibility, but we actually reimagine the past as well. We look at the present and we look at possible presence, we look at possible selves, we look at possible worlds. You know, it's a huge work in philosophy around that. So I would say that, you know, and for those futurists and future literacy people listening, this is not a, you know, it's not a competition, you know, we collaborate and integrate, but the future is one domain of possibility among others.

Mark Blackwell: 14:32

And one of the ideas I sense from the work is that interacting with the system and the environment, and you mentioned earlier the ethical selection plays a bigger role. Is that a fair comment?

Vlad Glaveanu: 14:46

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the the system is the beginning. In my work on creativity, I often talk about what is the unit of analysis? What do we focus on when we talk about creativity? Very often we focus on the product, the idea, what's being created, and the person. But these are not isolated things. First of all, what links them is a process. So process brings in time. And with that, you have the person in a context. You know, I often talk about actors or agents of creativity versus or in relation to audiences. And we're both actors and audiences. So I have this systemic view to begin with with possibilities. I often, and myself and my colleagues talk about ecologies of possibility or climates for a possibility. And I think this is where I'm sure we're gonna go to also questions around how to stimulate, foster these things. It's never by looking just at the individual in isolation. You have to think to map up the system. You know, that's probably the first step really in every innovation process.

Mark Blackwell: 15:44

I mean, just throwing you in the deep end now. So obviously, and let's see how far we can go in exploring, bringing out the concepts of possibility studies in my questions. There's, you know, Sam Altman and many other people are thinking about where to take AI in the future because there are many ways it could go. What could possibility studies bring to that question?

Vlad Glaveanu: 16:07

Wow. Well, AI, yes, this is the deep end that keeps getting deeper. I'm gonna pick up from where we left off with the system. AI is part of the system, you know, and it fascinates me to see because I work in higher ed and uh, you know, I have a lot of education colleagues, and sometimes you have this fear, which is legitimate to think critically, you know, fear potentially not, because fear kind of blinds us and narrows us. But this resistance to AI, which is almost like bringing the C back into a bottle, or you know, AI is here. That's it. You know, this is our current context. We we should be critical and reflective, but it is a tool, a very special tool, is much more than you know any other tool that we've interacted with as humanity. But from a sociocultural perspective and from a possibility studies perspective, we have always worked with tools and technologies. This is the definition of being a human. I mean, we are Homo sapiens, but we are first and foremost homofaber. We are the creators of tools. So to me, it fascinates me, and we can go deeper into what it means fully for possibility, but I love looking at online comments. I know I'm a masochist, and I love looking at you know creatives talking about AI, and there are so many legitimate concerns, absolutely to you know, copyright and you know, all of that. But what fascinates me is this idea, you have to do it yourself, you know, in your head, otherwise, it's a cheat. You know, you never do anything in your head. You always interact and collaborate. Of course, if you ask AI, give me the idea and I don't do anything, yes, that that's the delegation. But I feel like AI is poking again at our conception of creativity. You know, this happened historically, the Renaissance, and I'm not gonna take you that way back, but the printing press, the internet, you know, from the A's. We started thinking of creativity as a more social thing. Look at social media, look at TikTok, look at everything. Creativity is distributed. We evolve in how we think of our own creativity. And I think AI is really pushing the boundary on us finding two things. One is kind of the human dignity and place that we have and the role we have, which has to do with creativity and possibility in the age of AI, as they say. But the second one is understanding that we are hybrids. We've said we've always been, and and we will continue to be. Now, you know, the critical components should always be there, of course.

Mark Blackwell: 18:30

Well, indeed, it echoes a conversation I had two podcasts ago with Professor Scott Anthony, who was using found himself as a new academic, having been a consultant in Tufts Business School, and needed to do something about AAI and put a class together on that. And the clear learning from that is to get the hybrid success is human wisdom and the creativity of writing the prompt, which can only come from having lived an experiential life, is how we can really use it to augment ourselves and differentiate ourselves and bring some positivity to this and not think that we're going to let our brains go because it's the creativity of prompt writing again.

Vlad Glaveanu: 19:16

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I I do have one added concern. I mean, I'm I'm a dad of three very young kids, you know, the moment very young. And I do think, and this is a legitimate question, you know, in terms of the possible and the dynamic of relating to possibilities, AI does open a lot of things, but at the same time it closes others, of course. And there is something about the process of learning, the grit, the resistance, the tolerance to, you know, the fact that you have to wait. I feel like AI, you know, and the internet already and all the connectivity did something to our patience and to our attention. You know, we talk about economies of attention, we talk about a societal ADHD that we're at, you know, if AI doesn't work and give me something now, you know, I feel frustration, which is a new feeling. So I think there is a question about these younger generations that will only live with AI. Because I I think, and I completely agree with with uh your guest before, there is always an element of creativity. There is always, and I feel like for some of us who've seen the world before, AI has been around for a long time, but you know, public, public use of AI. And and now there is a lot we can draw on. But I do, I do sometimes wonder when AI eats and consumes its own products more, and when kids, you know, they they will not have written an essay by themselves, how would that dynamic go? So, yeah, that that is a there are legitimate questions there as well.

Mark Blackwell: 20:33

Indeed. Okay, so being positive, what is does it mean that we can more carefully about the skills that we should be cultivating in education in the future so that we use AI as an augment? And what is it that possibility studies can help? I'm thinking about you know, one of the areas you I remember from years ago when I first met you, perspective taking is a big AI. Yeah. Ethics, you know, meaning. Are these some of the themes that in your work highlight the difference between man and the machine that we should focus on in education?

Vlad Glaveanu: 21:08

Absolutely. I mean, all these words, you know, are still very much with me. They're very much what we talk about with possibility studies. I do have to, you know, coming back to what I said about dichotomies and what's the unit of analysis and how we often think of the mind isolated. I think a better question at times is not what separates us in this very as if we can exist completely independently. It's about the relationship and what we do with it. I mean, a lot of my work, and I think most of my colleagues, is about practice and action and how we we actually together, you know, negotiate meaning or create meaning or we re-interpret, we evaluate. It's it's it's the human-computer interaction. They used to call it in the olden days, but now it's even more. It's kind of a cyborg, cyborg realities are, you know, coming up more and more. So I think the question of what sets us apart is interesting, but sometimes a bit misleading because it cultivates still this idea that we could be apart from AI. I think AI mimics some of the way we think. It also completely doesn't think like humans because exactly of what you said. You know, there is no emotion and body. That is fundamental for creativity, possibility, and everything else. So I think what we will discover in time is better and better ways to use it. But also we will have to think seriously of when we have to use it. I think one of the big questions today, as a lot of companies and a lot of national governments, they're investing in AI, investing, investing, although, you know, we we see signs of people pulling out and worries of the AI bubble, but you know, for another podcast. But I think more is not always better. That's another like possibility studies lesson. So I I think one of the big skills would be when and how to use it and not to always jump to using it.

Mark Blackwell: 22:47

So practically, what would that mean to a you know manager of a team? Say they give me a con you know, they're thinking about entering a new market or launching a new product. How could with this hybrid nature mean in practice?

Vlad Glaveanu: 23:02

Well, that's a great question. I mean, it's always very contextual, but I've been I've been consulting sometimes with with different companies. And quite recently I gave a big session on futures, and AI was there and it was very tech related. Because how can you think of futures without tech, really? So, first of all, I think there is something about as you said, grounding ourselves in in human experience first in terms of any new market, any new customers and clients or whatever we we would call them. There is a bond of perspective. So even as AI could help us, for example, you know, there's an old design method, the personas method, which creates almost like little stories around different target clients or customers or things like that. AI could help us a lot write those, but it cannot just, you know, come up with them out of nowhere, or it cannot do it unguided by our experience. I think as we use these AI tools like descriptions for imagination, AI cannot do the imagining for us. There is something about you yourself being a user or perceiver or whatever of a product that no AI story can kind of you know replace. So I think as AI can can help you think of next steps, create a plan, do a personas type of exercise. We and managers will have to think about first and foremost the human relations they have. You can never sit at your office, never get out, never use the product, or meet a client. Those old focus groups, they will still be there. Probably there's gonna be an AI participant among those.

Mark Blackwell: 24:27

You're echoing another conversation I had with um Scott Belson, and we had we discussed this because um there's a concept of jobs to be done, which was invented by Clayton Christensen, which is fundamentally people hire products to get a job done. And the I one of his famous stories is about when he goes to McDonald's to get a milkshake. It's not because they're thirsty, it's because they need something to do on the 30-minute commute to work. And so this is the job to be done, is to be occupied by that thick milkshake for 30 minutes. And we came to the conclusion that AI will probably have a good job at start, you know, good idea at figuring out some of these. But but it's gonna fail badly even in the creation of some of these. Like, for example, talked about relationships. One of the most highest level jobs I PNG has for one of its detergent brands is to be a responsible parent. In other words, the that's the reason why they're selecting a branded detergent because they don't want their kids to look bad on the football pitch or scratch or something like this. So one is, you know, we've got a long way to go on you know imagining what the jobs to be done of humans are, and even further in the prioritization of what's most important to any one in one person or one individual versus another. So personally, I'm in my world very comfortable that there's a long way to go before it's going to um overtake. And it's really important to remember that a lot of things we do aren't so-called rational when I use that.

Vlad Glaveanu: 26:04

Also, you know, that again, that's what makes us human. We know that for a long time in psychology, exactly, that we're not fully rational and we shouldn't even aspire, potentially, because some of the best things in life, but you know, arguably creativity as well, depends on this messiness and even unconscious elements and things like that. I would say the jobs to be done is very interesting to me because it brings time back. And I think what AI is is uh is a maximizer of possibilities. Now, I know people are critical about how some of them are very predictable, some of them are wrong, some of them are hallucinated. Absolutely. Still, when you input something into AI, it's gonna be like here are six ideas you know connected to that. Would you like them to follow through on any of them? Now, there is a problem here, two problems actually. And one, I'm I'm I'm working with many colleagues, but with Ron Baghetto from Arizona State, we're talking about slow AI. And this is not our invention as a term, and the slow movement has been going on for many years. But from a creativity and slash possibility perspective, it's interesting that we should not jump to solutions that quickly. A lot of creativity work, innovation work shows that actually it's the waiting and the incubation that makes things grow and take a different turn. So we can have easy creativity if we wanted, but we should slow down AI. And I think there are bots and chatbots, and I know Ron is doing a lot of those, who actually ask you more questions that give you more answers. So that's one way of using AI still, you know, with that in mind. The second one is the time with free. I mean, I noticed that in my own work. You know, I occasionally use AI, say that on camera. And, you know, you save time. I mean, you all of a sudden something you would have done in two days materializes and you edit and you and then what do you do next? That's such a big question for me because it goes back to the job to be done, the detours we take as humans. I'm afraid that in our go, go, go society, we're gonna fill that time with more tasks instead of acknowledging, you know, we've been challenged as as humanity, really, with the work-life balance for a long time, probably since the industrial revolution or before. I wonder or I worry that AI is actually going to push us over the edge before we come back because it's freeing time potentially to use more AI to do more things. So that's that's something of a conversation I have with myself. I will tell you that. But yeah, that's um that two issues, yeah.

Mark Blackwell: 28:15

Beautiful. I it echoes a conversation I had with someone a month or so ago who was very keen on AI agents and saying, yes, this is going to be the thing for travel. It immediately occurred to me, well, the context dependence. So if I'm a busy business person and no longer have a secretary and I've got to book a flight to Paris and then New York and down to Mexico, an AI agent is great because it's saving me doing something very tedious. And that's I can see the benefit of that. Different context. Family trying to plan its vacation. The whole planning of the vacation and the discussion and the disputes and the different perspectives is part of the fun of having a family vacation, and you risk taking that away. And so it echoes exactly what you're saying about the slow AI.

Vlad Glaveanu: 29:03

I thought that was Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. You know, and and having a vacation is my second point.

Mark Blackwell: 29:13

Right. Yeah, indeed. So I suppose the other thing that you going back to the use of AI in um in the commerce, you noted, I think, in some of your research that you've seen AI coming up in silos in small in groups and not missing some of the context. Can you talk to that at all?

Vlad Glaveanu: 29:34

Yeah, well, the context we come back to our theme, isn't it? It's very interesting because AI can can give you a lot of context, but there is something about selecting context that we have to do as humans, and we we always do. Our attention is selective, uh, you know, the attention, the capabilities of AI are also selective, but they they overtake us by a by a lot, you know, in terms of speed and and you know, kind of mapping it can do quite quickly. But I think not everything in our context is relevant. So that that that is a big question, you know, what difference makes a difference? I was I was you know writing back in the day about that. So I think one exercise that we do with possibility studies, for example, is mapping possibilities and mapping systems. And one of the things I love to do, you know, going back to perspective taking and all of that, is to help have people gradually expand who they think is relevant in a system. Like I work a lot with educators, for example, and and they would put, you know, students, teachers, parents, the traditional things. And then if you stretch them a bit, they're gonna think of governments or, you know, ministries of education or something like that, which is all relevant. But then if you use techniques like, well, playfulness, role-playing, storytelling, and so on, you know, you go into thinking, well, what about media? I mean, mass media is probably one of the biggest actors of education, you know, through apps, through everything. So, where is it as an actor? And then non-human actors as well. And then if we push even further, I like to throw in wildcards, you know, to think about jobs that seem completely irrelevant, like I don't know, dentists and clowns and whatever. But what do those teach us? So I think what AI does, because it is a language model and our thinking, you know, it's very much network-based and in terms of exploring immediate associations, we need to retain the capacity to do a cognitive jump or a semantic jump into a different field. And we have possibilities techniques to do that. And with AI, to be fair, you you can use temperature or other things to kind of make it more random. But even that randomness, you know, it's not all about randomness. I have great colleagues. Like Wendy Ross and others who work on serendipity. Serendipity is not just chance and randomness, it's chance plus the prepared mind. So the prepared mind will not be the AI mind because the AI doesn't have a mind, it doesn't have intentions, it doesn't have that. We have to have that prepared mind. So I think I think that's all interesting in terms of using it better, but also understanding when we have to close it off and kind of do some work on our own and come back to it.

Mark Blackwell: 31:59

Because at its simplest, the large language model is only making connections with what has already existed.

Vlad Glaveanu: 32:06

Right.

Mark Blackwell: 32:07

It cannot make anything that has not existed because there's no data set to pull on. So it cannot do abstract thinking.

Vlad Glaveanu: 32:13

Exactly. And you know, in fairness, our minds are also very grounded in what we know. And AI would know or have learned potentially more than we can. But as we come back to those ideas of perceptual learning, of embodied learning, of emotional types of learning, that's out of reach. You know, the emotional language is there, but the emotion is missing. So there are definitely things we will access that AI will never.

Mark Blackwell: 32:37

But I think, you know, how can we make this useful in the workplace? Is so humans can differentiate because of abstract thought. Your your set of questions, you know, what if this constraint didn't exist, and so forth, are tools which help people, if I say, tell me if I'm wrong, enable more abstract thinking, enable more new connections that then had not existed before to be formed. Is that a fair assessment of how the tool could be used?

Vlad Glaveanu: 33:05

Yeah, absolutely. I'm quite excited about Ron develops possibility bots. So if those are people are interested, you know, can just Google or search possibility bots and they're among us, you know what I mean. So I think you can implement some of these principles into chatbots and work with them. There are a few things here. First of all, the dependency on these chatbots. You know, who's deciding on the principles? It will have to be a vision coming from leadership, from managers, from teachers, from co-created with employees and students and others. But there is something about the choice. You can do many things with possibilities, and we know we we develop plenty of tools. You know, we can spend a good hour or more talking about those. But when to choose what works and why do things work, that's again the human, the human kind of thought coming in. Is creating dependence. Going back to what we said, it's not only getting the idea, it's how you get it and what it does to you and to your self-image, to your time and to your attention. And I think there is value in using it in moderation or using it smartly. I mean, that's a smart use of AI would probably be the number one master's level degree that's gonna be in the future, you know, MSE in smart AI use. I'm calling that. You know, I'm not a futurist, I'm not I'm gonna call that. I mean, already prompt engineering, and you you mentioned, you know, it's it's it's here. But um, but yeah, so I I think there is something about selection of tools. There is something about the process itself that doesn't always have to be AI supported. And um there is something about evaluation. Evaluation is a big theme in creativity as well. For a long time, creativity has been obsessed with divergent thinking, production, ideation, ideation, ideation. But we know that convergent thinking, evaluative thinking, I mean, they're they're a huge piece of that puzzle. It's it's similar with AI. Who does the evaluation? We know that AI needs to be monitored and not by another AI, by a human. And there is something so fundamental and so creative in evaluating things. And I think we're gonna recover and we should rediscover the creativity of interpreting, evaluating, and using, which is again in our remit.

Mark Blackwell: 35:09

But no, I'd like to know more about the divergent thinking because yeah, one of my I think you've heard this on all the podcasts, is that you know, and it goes back to the idea of boundaries. I hate it in an ideation, people, when people say think out of the box or blue sky thinking. Because for me, that immediately shuts down my brain. I think it's got something to do with not having boundaries in in place. So that's one of the while you need to have the box to put yourself in to be creative. You need the constraints. But I think you've I really enjoy it, you know. We always think about creating new ideas, but the divergent, the convergent bit is actually making choices from that.

Vlad Glaveanu: 35:47

Yeah, yeah. Todd Lubart and other colleagues have have written about that. You can look at it as choice, you can look at it as synthesis, you can look, but there is something of this movement towards singular ideas or decisions. You know, divergent is the plurality of things. And I love plurality. I mean, my whole theory of the possible is based on multiplicity and difference and plurality. But plurality cannot sustain itself, it's the movement, converge, diverge, you know. It's like I call it, you know, immersion, detachment, and all the rest.

Mark Blackwell: 36:22

But it's it's working at how to converge with, you know, I suggest maybe in a in a team-based situation rather than boss says this is what we're gonna do. So you're really getting the value of the human talent in the room.

Vlad Glaveanu: 36:35

Yeah, exactly. And and then you can get new perspectives with AI. I mean, I think it's wise uh when important decisions are being made to run them by AI, to to kind of you know see what the AI systems could bring up. But we can never let that decision or or that process solely to the AI because the human experience would be missing. And then there is something about implementing things that AI will, I mean, it will say, Would you like me to do a next step? But at the end of the day, most things we do are human actions and interaction with other humans, and that AI will just leave us there. You know, it will tell us some things, it will write a big text and stuff. But because we have to do it, it's again our creativity that is being called us called up.

Mark Blackwell: 37:17

So thank you, Vlad. So as a wrap-up, you have in front of you a mid-career executive managing a young team and grappling with a new world of AI, exposed to the possibilities that exist in possibility studies. What would be the three things that you would encourage that executive to think about?

Vlad Glaveanu: 37:37

Well, let me check with AI first. No. Well, so I think I'm gonna build on what we said because I I can bring in wonder, utopias, but let's wrap it up. You know, you said from the start we have a bit too many terms. So let's go back to playfulness, constraints, and ethics. Let's do that. Okay. So we we talked about constraints. There is, again, the value of hard work, resistance, and perseverance can never be underestimated. I think we live in worlds where frustration and failure are so badly seen. You shouldn't be frustrated. No, no, nothing should frustrate you. No, there is such a huge place and such a place in learning, not only in possibility thinking and creativity. So welcome the resistance, welcome the frustrations, dwell in it a little bit. Don't go for easy closure, immediate closure with AI, without AI, and so on. The second one is about playfulness. It's the the trust, you know, you mentioned trust and psychological safety. And there is nothing that makes a room kind of at ease than starting with this volume of play. Um, you know, Tom Ormerod and other colleagues, they they talked at some point about the the bad idea of brainstorm. I don't know if you or your listeners would know, but I love that idea. We brainstorm for great ideas. Let's play a game where the worst idea will be the winner. So let's go at it. You know, people would be shocked at first, it would be kind of, you know, thinking, I don't know. But it is one of the most kind of exhilarating exercises. And actually, if you use that method, as Tom and others developed it, you learn from the bad idea because what makes it a bad idea? Sometimes a bad idea might not be that bad, you know. So anyway, it's a whole process. But playfulness, the second and third, I talked about ethics, and I think we should end with that in an age where, and we haven't said about the environmental costs of AI, about copyright, about I mean, there is the elephant in the room that needs to be looked at and studied with AI. So there is an ethics, and I'm gonna talk about use of AI and human human relations. You cannot delegate to AI the business of humans, the tasks that make our life meaningful, or decisions that are about and with other humans. I feel that there is an ethics, you know, Kantian ethics. Do not look at people as uh as means, but as end goals. AI is a means, but do not let it turn other people into means and the the way you know we do business or we do just human living. So that these are my three top three.

Mark Blackwell: 39:56

Fabulous. That's a really good session. Constraints, playfulness, and ethics. We'll remember that. That's it.

Vlad Glaveanu: 40:03

Title of our podcast.

Mark Blackwell: 40:04

Absolutely well done. Thank you so much, Vlad. That's really good. Wishing you all the best. Very exciting, and I love the direction that you're coming at it. It's may I say non-traditional, non obvious for many, but I think it's bringing some value to bring that event to it. So thank you very much.

Vlad Glaveanu: 40:19

So, so much. Thanks.