Gatland has resisted any temptation to repeat that experiment and is also mindful of Italy coming within a whisker of beating Ireland for the first time in this season's championship in Rome, with a late Ronan O'Gara drop-goal saving the visitors in a 13-11 win.
If Mr Brown succumbs to that temptation, he might pick up a few more votes at the general election due within the next two years but probably not enough to win.
As for the corporate embrace of innovation: before we give in to temptation, and dismiss these efforts as cynical platitudes, consider the following: what if a senior leader within a large company decided she genuinely wanted to innovate, to try to get a traditional corporation to think differently, to share ideas better, to express passion and enthusiasm, and to leverage scale to maximize the impact of such innovative thinking.