Alright, here's one way off left field...I guess that's how you start thinking once the architecture-side dominates your life. ;-)

My 15th-month old loves Sesame Street.  One of the segments of the show is called Elmo's World.  Here's a description of the show from Wikipedia:

Elmo, a small red monster who speaks in third person and is perpetually 2 1/2 to 3 years old. The show also features Mr. Noodle, a human mime character, and Elmo's pet goldfish, Dorothy. The segment was first introduced the beginning of its 30th season on November 16, 1998.

The segment takes place in a computer animated crayon-drawn apartment imagined by Elmo.

Each day, the segment begins with Elmo announcing the topic for the day. Then, there is a series of skits and interviews centered on that topic. The skits and interviews are essentially the same everyday only changing the subject matter. They also always appear in the same repetitive order.

After watching the show everyday (we DVR-it), I started to realize that in some ways what Elmo creates in his world is similar to what we do in the software development world.  Throughout the entire show Elmo asks questions about the topic in question and then interacts with it.  For example, in one particular show, the topic was "Games."  During the 15 minute segment Elmo was able to ask the audience, "How do you play a game?" and show examples of perform such task.  The main points from the show is that with human interaction and imagination we can do anything.

In the world of software development, I think this holds true as well.  We need to interact with our (in|ex)ternal customers and show them that we care (if not passionate) about their needs just as they are.  Surrounding the entire process is imagination.  Without it, we couldn't develop smart solutions to everyday problems.  Just the fact that I can write a simple instructions for a computer to print out Hello, World! is amazing!  Now think about some other complex problems that could be solved if you put a little imagination (and innovation) into the mix.

I know, the comparison is kind of a stretch but it makes sense ... to me at least.  What do you guys think?