Customer Reviews

Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play

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There's an amusing but cogent passage in this book, where Hohmann talks about things you know, things you know you don't know, and things you don't know you don't know. This exactly echoes what Donald Rumsfeld said recently about knowables, unknown knowables and unknown unknowables. Rumsfeld was talking about terrorist threats against the US, while Hohmann is describing your company's marketplace. The main purpose of this book is to try to move items from the category of things you don't know you don't know into the category of things you know you don't know. As Hohmann points out, in the latter, you actually have some knowledge about whatever that subject is. You can then apply other methods to reduce your ignorance about the subject.

The Innovation Games is a methodology for getting your customers to role play their experiences, in a search for what they might want in a future improved product. Or for deficiencies in your current products. There is nothing in this approach to limit it to high technology products or services. It can be germane to any industry.

Perhaps the main appeal of Innovation Games is that it can engender more creative input and feedback from your customers. It goes beyond asking them to fill out survey forms. These are often constrained by you having to devise the questions. And for the unknown unknowables, you simply will not be able to formulate questions about those. Beyond giving space for the respondent to write any other concerns she might have. The problem with the latter is that many respondents might also be unaware of those unknowables. The Innovation Games is a process whereby sometimes these hard unknowables can be made explicit in the multiplayer role playing. No guarantees. But sometimes it can be worth the effort.

Most of the content of this book belongs in sales brochure not a book. A large proportion of this book is a long, overblown ad for the author's services.

Some of the ideas, while creative, are just repackaging of many well-known and established techniques.

In addition, there is one reality the author ignores. The exercises are not going to work well with "average," everyday people. They require a degree of creativity and acumen that quite honestly, most people (including very well-educated ones) just do not possess. I work in this industry everyday and if there is one thing I've learned it is most individuals are much better reacting to ideas than creating them.

I run user experience research for one of the big tech firms in Seattle. I've been using this book recently to bring some more creativity and variety to the activities we do in our studies. I've found the games are really practical, and there is just-enough material on each to get going. So I'd definitely recommend it.

However, if someone isn't already familiar with running games like this, then they may need quite a bit of practice first. Since, the actual instructions are only part of the story: setting the right mood in the room is important, as is one's manner as a facilitator. The best way of learning this is practice, and working with someone who is already good at this and learning from them. Yet, as book go, there is another book I recommend on the subject: Moderating to the Max, and the Culture Code.

It isn't the job of your customer to translate their needs into your product offerings. Of course, everyone says you just need to listen to your customer, but no one says how. In "Innovation Games" Luke Hohmann describes 12 games you can play to help you better understand your customers' needs and help you discover great products.

In part I, Luke first provides an overview for understanding and implementing innovation games. He then discusses the process from selecting the game to interpreting the results.

In part 2, twelve separate games are described which can help you understand one or more of the following:
- Unmet and/or idealized market needs
- Products and services usage and relationships
- Product and service functionality
- How to shape your product for the future

Finally, in part 3 tools and templates are provided to help you quickly start playing innovation games with your customers.

In a world where the mantras of "innovate" and "listen to your customer" prevail, Luke Hohmann gives you usable tools to help you do just that.

Great book. I judge the quality of the books I read by how many 3M sticky notes I have stuck to pages. This book had tons.

I like this book because it's full of practical tools on discovering your customer's needs, wants, and likes. As an agile innovation consultant, I have used several techniques from this book to help customers describe their most important features (product box) and then prioritize them (buy a feature). The author emphasizes the need for thorough preparation and documentation while making the business process seem fun like a game.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is trying to draw out customer requirements. There are even some techniques for discovering the killer features that will set your product apart from your competitors' (Give them a hot tub). I plan on using these techniques in upcoming customer engagements especially for helping them with strategic direction and product requirements gathering.

It's a must for any innovation professional.


Armond Mehrabian
amehrabian@portofinosolutions.com
Twitter: @armond_m

The process of eliciting requirements suffers from some of the same problems as the process of collecting information for expert systems. A person does not really know how much he or she knows about a subject. Each of us knows something so well, that much of what we know is not part of our conscious awareness. It is hard to bring that information to the conscious mind to share with another person.

What this tells me is when I am in the role of eliciting requirements from another person, I need many different ways of getting information, because different means will achieve different results. I can take an analytical approach (tell me about...), a physical approach (show me ...), and a creative approach (let's play a game ...). The more approaches I use, the more information I will get.

What I love about Innovation Games is that games use a part of the brain that we tend to ignore when "at work", bypassing the analytical parts and tapping into the fun, creative areas. This is a great way to find new information about the requirements of a product or service. I think it works especially well because most people I interview are expecting an analytical approach, and using games brings a fresh perspective.

Luke Hohmann has really captured a great set of games. He explains the games very clearly, and gives detailed instructions for how to organize an Innovation Games session so that everyone can make effective use of his techniques.

Thanks so much Luke for bringing us another great book.

With the disclaimer that I worked with Luke while some of the ideas that turned into the Games where bouncing around in his head, I have seen these games work to produce tangible results. (We used an early version of Remember the Future to develop the successful plan for our first product deployment.)

In "Blink", Malcom Gladwell makes the point that if you ask people what they want, they will tell you what they *think* they want. (When asked, nobody thought they wanted the Aeron chair. Oops.) It takes a bit of digging to get beneath the thought level, tapping into real emotional wants and needs to extract ideas for products that stand a chance of being wildly successful. The Innovation Games help with that digging, engaging players above and below the level of concious thought.

Luke has created a handbook useful to product managers, business analysts, project leads and team/project facilitators. I've found these techniques -- collaborative play -- essential for discovery and invention as well as useful to the hard analysis of what products //really// need to provide customers.
Luke has packaged a collection of practical and fun techniques to use in conjunction with requirements workshops, which explore user needs. Luke writes in a practical manner, provides fun cards, and useful guidance on the facilitation practices needed to be successful with these tools.

One of the challenges in new product innovation is that the process cannot be broken down into a simple sequence of steps. "Follow these six steps" is not advice that will lead to the breakthrough thinking and innovative ideas that lead to best-selling new products or enhancements to existing products.

"Innovation Games" acknowledges that innovation and creativity do not come from following a predefined sequence of steps but from pushing ourselves to thinking about products, users, and usage scenarios in different ways. One of my favorite techniques from this book is the idea of thinking of a product or service as a speed boat with an assortment of attached anchors, each representing something that a customer doesn't like about the product or service.

Playing the games described in this book will almost certainly lead you to better and more innovative product ideas.