Trust. Connection. Transformation. One small creative risk at a time.
“Delightful and profound, Safe Danger may be one of the most useful management books you will read this year. With its engaging stories and practical creative activities, Ben Swire offers a timeless guide to living a fuller and more innovative life while becoming a better leader.”
—Amy C. Edmondson
Novartis Professor of Leadership, Harvard Business School; author of Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well, and the researcher whose work brought the term “psychological safety” into everyday life.
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PREORDER NOW!
Praise for Ben Swire’s Safe Danger
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"Ben opens the door for teams to come alive, wake up and make an impact."
Seth Godin
Author of This Is Strategy and
This Is Marketing -
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"A research-backed roadmap to building more effective teams."
Laurie Santos
Professor of Psychology at Yale, and host of The Happiness Lab podcast -
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"A timeless guide to living a fuller and more innovative life."
Amy Edmondson
Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership, Harvard Business School; author of Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well, and the person whose work brought the term “psychological safety” into everyday life. -
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"A blueprint for building cultures where connection and creativity become the norm."
Tim Brown
Author of Change by Design and
Chair of IDEO -
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"Doesn’t just explain the value of risk — it makes you feel it."
Jad Abumrad
Creator of Radiolab, More Perfect, and Dolly Parton’s America -
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"Swire is a brilliant guide to the invisible forces that shape our relationships, our creativity, our very sense of belonging."
Jordan Harbinger
Host of The Jordan Harbinger Show
About the Book
We all crave inspiring experiences, meaningful work, and deeper relationships. But getting there requires risk—of vulnerability, discomfort, even failure. So we stay safe… and stuck.
Safe Danger offers a different path. Drawing from psychology, design, and real-world facilitation, Ben Swire introduces a set of playful, low-stakes activities that unlock the human qualities we need most at work and home: trust, curiosity, joy, and connection.
Readers will walk away seeing risk—and safety—differently. Safe Danger doesn’t just talk about trust or creativity as abstract ideals. It gives people a visceral sense of how those things actually work—how they’re built, how they break, and what they need to grow.
The book carefully explains how to design experiences that are emotionally honest without being overwhelming, how to foster creativity without sacrificing security, and how to build teams where people want to take bold ideas seriously. But most importantly, Safe Danger will help readers to start noticing the subtle moments in daily life—the jokes left unsaid, the feedback never given, the instincts edited out—and realize that those moments are opportunities to gently start growing into the person they want to be.
Whether you need to inspire your team, reignite your creativity, or just get more out of your time on earth, Safe Danger offers the tools and insights you’ve been missing.
About the Author
Ben Swire is one of today’s most innovative thought leaders on company culture and workplace belonging.
An award-winning designer, writer, and former Design Lead at the iconic innovation firm, IDEO, Ben co-founded Make Believe Works, a team-building company that uses creative activities to accelerate connection, deepen trust, and fuel collaboration.
His methods have helped organizations from Fortune 500 companies to public school districts build healthy and productive workplace cultures, one playful risk at a time.
Bring Safe Danger to Your Team
Keynotes
Ben helps organizations build the kind of culture people actually want to be part of—creative, connected, and psychologically safe. A former leader at IDEO and co-founder of Make Believe Works, Ben delivers keynotes that are as practical as they are playful, showing how to unlock trust, boost retention, and spark real engagement across teams.
Workshops
At Make Believe Works, we design playful workshops that use art, joy, and storytelling to spark the kind of experiential learning that actually sticks. From Salesforce to Google tto Spotify, teams turn to us to help them build the kind of meaningful connections that fuel collaboration, creativity, and long-term success.