IDEO partner Duane Bray

One of the more interactive sessions at the 2009 Boards Summit was Duane Bray's talk on "Serious Play". The IDEO partner led a series of exploratory exercises that culminated in cathartic Nerf rocket war. For the second installment of our Boards Summit '09 interview series, we sat down with Bray and asked him how he playfully pries cynical ad execs away from their PDAs.

"One of the things companies struggle with is how to innovate and come up with new ideas but innovation doesn't mean a whole lot these days," he said. "It's an overused word. So how do you unpack that and find something you can sink your teeth into?"