Brendan Boyle

Brendan Boyle is a toy inventor, consulting associate professor at Stanford University’s d.School, and Partner at IDEO. He believes that play is the key to innovation and has spoken to creative leaders, entrepreneurs, and students about the importance of playful exploration and risk-taking.

He founded the Play Lab to uncover kid-centered solutions to the challenge of boredom. As Brendan says, "The opposite of play is boredom." Under his leadership, the Play Lab has invented and licensed hundreds of toys and apps, including the best-selling Jumperoo and Elmo Calls, respectively.

Brendan also consults with companies about redesigning their organizational behavior to include space for play, wrote (and still teaches) the course From Play to Innovation at Stanford’s d.School, and co-authored the award-winning encyclopedia of never-before-seen inventions, The Klutz Book of Inventions.

Brendan holds an M.S. from the Joint Program for Design at Stanford University and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan State University.