As many of you know, I'm actively involved in the K-12 school I went to growing up,

which means I'm pretty tapped into what kids are doing in school these days.

And you know what I learned recently?

Some elementary schools intentionally don't have erasers on pencils.

I was shocked to hear this until I learned about the rationale.

They want to teach kids that it's okay to make mistakes.

Crossing something out isn't ugly or wrong.

It's perfectly fine to revise, change your mind, make an error, write something incorrectly.

Mistakes are acceptable.

And if we force ourselves not to do things the right way, that may help us be creative in ways we could never imagine.

For instance, my niece drew a picture of me with googly eyes.

Mistakes are everywhere.

Auntie spelled O-N-T-E, things crossed out, yet it remains one of the most beautiful

pieces of artwork I've received.

There's even a triangle with some odd lines in it, but instead of erasing what she had done,

that triangle now looks like a 3D pyramid.

It's taken on a whole new shape, and maybe its strange lines helped her expand her mind to think about triangles in a whole new way.

This drawing makes it clear to me that removing the ability to erase can create the conditions for students to be even more innovative in their work.

And taking erasers off pencils, letting kids make mistakes,

is just one way of rejecting the norm. So how can we bring that encouragement to do things

differently to other arenas, like our workplaces? I'm Madhanna. This is Ted Business. Our speaker today is Christina Tosi, the founder of Milk Bar, a bakery that's well known for its inventive cakes, cookies, and sweet treats. In this talk, Christina shares how breaking the rules and challenging your assumptions can lead to the best kinds of innovation at work.

Then after the talk, I'll share some ways we can create the conditions for innovation in our workplaces.

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