Serious Play: How the World's Best Companies Simulate to Innovate [Hardcover]

Michael Schrage (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 10, 1999

Successful innovation demands more than a good strategic plan; it requires creative improvisation. Much of the "serious play" that leads to breakthrough innovations is increasingly linked to experiments with models, prototypes, and simulations. As digital technology makes prototyping more cost-effective, serious play will soon lie at the heart of all innovation strategies, influencing how businesses define themselves and their markets. Author Michael Schrage is one of today's most widely recognized experts on the relationship between technology and work. In Serious Play, Schrage argues that the real value in building models comes less from the help they offer with troubleshooting and problem solving than from the insights they reveal about the organization itself. Technological models can actually change us--improving the way we communicate, collaborate, learn, and innovate. With real-world examples and engaging anecdotes, Schrage shows how companies such as Disney, Microsoft, Boeing, IDEO, and DaimlerChrysler use serious play with modeling technologies to facilitate the collaborative interactions that lead to innovation. A user's guide included with the book helps readers apply many of the innovation practices profiled throughout. A landmark book by one of the most perceptive voices in the field of innovation.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Recall the old saying about all work and no play making Jack a dull boy? World-class companies today need play--serious play--if they want to make truly innovative products, argues Michael Schrage, an MIT Media Lab fellow and Fortune magazine columnist. In Serious Play he writes, "When talented innovators innovate, you don't listen to the specs they quote. You look at the models they've created." Whether it's a spreadsheet that tests a new financial model or a foam prototype of a calculator, what interests Schrage is not the model itself, but the behavior that play--be it modeling, prototyping, or simulation--inspires.

Schrage examines the approaches to successful prototyping at companies such as AT&T, Boeing, Microsoft, and DaimlerChrysler and describes the kind of culture that's needed for encouraging innovation. In the last chapter, he lays out the 10 rules of serious play, including: Be willing to fail early and often; know when the costs outweigh the benefits; know who wins and who loses from an innovation; build a prototype that engages customers, vendors, and colleagues; create markets around prototypes; and simulate the customer experience. Well-written and inspiring, Serious Play, is a first-rate user's guide for managers, project leaders, and other innovators. --Dan Ring

From Booklist

At such firms as Walt Disney, Microsoft, 3M, Sony, and Hewlitt-Packard, serious play is serious work. Schrage, a research associate at MIT Media Lab and columnist for Fortune, sets out to explore "serious play," which he defines as creative improvisation in corporations. Serious play is taking place worldwide, and it uses such "toys" as models, simulations, and prototypes. With the development of sophisticated technology, the distinction among these three toys has blurred, and they all are used as an effort to recreate some aspect of reality that matters; their real value is the insight they provide an organization. The irony of innovation in any field, especially the most competitive, is that you can't be a serious innovator unless you are willing to play--which means seriously investing in the challenge of confronting the uncertainties that future markets will bring by rigorously questioning and revising the rules. This is a "must read" book. Mary Whaley

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press; 1 edition (December 10, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0875848141
• ISBN-13: 978-0875848143
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #229,312 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #80 in Books > Computers & Technology > Graphic Design > 3D Graphics

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Who Moved Our Prototype?, March 2, 2000

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Serious Play: How the World's Best Companies Simulate to Innovate (Hardcover)

There is more significance to the title than one may initially assume. Some "play" can be taken much too seriously as when overzealous parents scream at their children as they begin to compete in organized sports; other "play" is not treated seriously enough as when a corporation discourages (perhaps even punishes) innovative thinking unless it has an immediate and favorable impact on the bottom line. Many executives, thus abused, may then vent their frustrations by behaving boorishly at a Little League game.

In the Foreword, Tom Peters quotes Schrage's assertion that "Innovative prototypes generate innovative teams. Not vice versa." Peters then observes that, in Serious Play, the "big idea" is that "the prototyping process becomes the scaffolding" for an enterprise's approach to innovation. As Schrage explains, "I have always enjoyed rehearsals more than performances." I suggest that you keep that statement clearly in mind as you proceed through the book. It reveals much about Schrage's perspective on the correlations between prototypes and innovation.

Here is how the book is organized: Part I: Getting Real, Part II: Model Behavior, and Part III: S(t)imulating Innovation. Schrage then provides a User's Guide and Bibliography. Throughout the book, he shares a wealth of real-world experience which explains what innovation is, and, what it can help to accomplish, not only with the design of a new product or service but also with the formulation of new and better ways for people to work together. The key is simulation; moreover, "not just playing with representations of ideas" (lots of ideas, the more the better) but "playing with the various versions of representations of ideas."

Near the end of the final chapter, Schrage poses a number of critically important questions, suggesting that the "best hope for answering these questions, or coping with their implications, is to build or grow models and play with them seriously." The world's best companies simulate to innovate. For example: American Airlines, Boeing, DaimlerChrysler, General Electric, IBM, IDEO, Walt Disney, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft, and Royal Dutch Shell. Schrage believes that the creative tensions between innovators who design and innovators who evolve "will likely result in breakthroughs in products, services, and their yet-to-be-anticipated hybrids." So, why not prototype how to prototype? Why not play simulation games which reveal new and better ways to simulate?

Tom Peters describes Serious Play as "simply the best book on innovation I've ever read." I agree. Perhaps you will, also.

36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book changed how I think about simulation, November 18, 1999

By 

Michael P. Bean "Hippolyte" (San Francisco, California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Serious Play: How the World's Best Companies Simulate to Innovate (Hardcover)

This is one of the best books on simulation that I've read. Through many intriguing examples, Serious Play shows how simulation can accelerate and improve decision-making. The book explains how simulation can be a critical tool for strategic planning. Schrage frames simulation as an inclusive, primary business activity, instead of something exclusive, performed by experts in a back office.

I especially liked Schrage's recognition of spreadsheets as a simulation tool. In discussions on simulation, spreadsheets are usually ignored because they are seen as unsophisticated. Schrage shows how spreadsheet simulations made many of the financial innovations of the 80s and early 90s possible.

In addition to convincing readers that simulations are valuable, Schrage does a good job of introducing readers to how simulations can be implemented in business. The chapters near the end of the book on measuring the ROI of simulations and his brief user's guide provide some useful tools for those interested in using simulations and prototypes to improve decision-making.

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Big Picture, December 1, 1999

By 

Greg Clay ([e-mail]) (Rochester, Michigan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Serious Play: How the World's Best Companies Simulate to Innovate (Hardcover)

Schrage makes strong arguments for the value of simulating/modeling/prototyping. By treating these terms as synonyms, he is able to avoid being dragged down in the minutae of modeling techniques and approaches.

This book will help engineers, designers and simulationists communicate the value of prototypes. Executives will understand some of the potential pitfalls of managing prototype-driven products. Pariticularly interesting are his points on how modeling affects behavior in an organization and how an organization must be prepared to handle innovative prototypes.

Simulationists looking for discussions including terms like "discrete-event," "systems dynamics," and "probability distribution" will want to look elsewhere. Schrage's examples, mostly from the world of spreadsheet financial models, physical product prototyping, and software development, deal with the organizational implications of innovative prototypes, not "how to" develop prototypes.