Theater professor Lee Devin, who co-authored the book Artful Making with Harvard Business School MBA Robert Austin, made a rather profound announcement in our Deep Dive session at the Agile Games.  He said, “It is important to distinguish among things. ”  The way we assign meaning certainly has some plasticity and is nuanced by a community’s culture.  However, we can only recognize the need to invent a new term if we start with clear definitions.

I incorrectly defined the term “neoteny” in the previous post.  It is not, as I reported “the ability/inclination to play into adulthood.”  Instead, it is “the retention of juvenile traits into adulthood,” of which playfulness may be one.  THANK YOU to Robert Marra, Phd, for the correction, now in the newly-edited version.

The study of the right use of words in language becomes super-important (wait – is that a word?) when:

a) engaging in cross-sector exchange; and/or

b) reaching for metaphor to illustrate an idea

No sense being fancy if it ain’t right!   Think I’ll pick up a copy of The Meaning of Meaning, by C. K. Ognen and I.A. Richards…