It is not only Stuart Brown that emphasizes playfulness as an important aspect of humanity (read my related post here). There is an ongoing discussion in Sweden around using the notion of play as a lens for increasing the understanding of entrepreneurs and enterprising behavior. It was initated by Daniel Hjort some 10 years ago through his doctoral thesis, where he picked up the expression “Homo Ludens” from the 1955 book by Johan Huizinga where he studied the play element in culture. Hjort wanted to counterbalance the focus on “Homo Economicus”, the economically driven entrepreneur. Read one of his articles here. The discussion has continued through a couple of journal articles. Some Swedish researchers within entrepreneurship that have contributed to the discussion are Bengt Johannisson, Malin Tillmar and Karin Berglund. The most recent article by Tillmar and Berglund can be read here. As an entrepreneurship education researcher I wonder how this might be used to improve the level of learning occuring in educational settings if we focus more explicitly on playfulness, in a reasonably serious way of course. Entrepreneurial pedagogy could be a good starting point for exploring this more.
