Play and the Escape from Local Optima:

"Play has features that make it suitable for finding the best way forward in a world of conflicting demands. In acquiring cognitive skills, individuals are in danger of finding suboptimal solutions to the many problems that confront them. In deliberately moving away from what might look like the metaphorical final resting point, each individual may end up somewhere better. Play may therefore fulfill a probing role that enables the individual to escape from false endpoints, or local optima (Bateson, 2011). An analogy is a mountain surrounded by lesser peaks. A climber might get to the top of a lesser peak only to discover that they must descend again before scaling a higher one. When stuck on a metaphorical lower peak, it can be beneficial to have active mechanisms for getting off it and onto a higher one. In practice this means that play is an evolved mechanism for uncovering possibilities that are better than those obtained without playing."

Play, Playfulness, Creativity and Innovation
Bateson & Martin

[See Also: The concept of play]