Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play [Paperback]

Luke Hohmann (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Innovation Through Understanding^sm

 

The toughest part of innovation? Accurately predicting what customers want, need, and will pay for. Even if you ask them, they often can’t explain what they want. Now, there’s a breakthrough solution: Innovation Games. Drawing on his software product strategy and product management consulting experience, Luke Hohmann has created twelve games that help you uncover your customers’ true, hidden needs and desires.

 

You’ll learn what each game will accomplish, why it works, and how to play it with customers. Then, Hohmann shows how to integrate the results into your product development processes, helping you focus your efforts, reduce your costs, accelerate time to market, and deliver the right solutions, right from the start.

• Learn how your customers define success
• Discover what customers don’t like about your offerings
• Uncover unspoken needs and breakthrough opportunities
• Understand where your offerings fit into your customers’ operations
• Clarify exactly how and when customers will use your product or service
• Deliver the right new features, and make better strategy decisions
• Increase empathy for the customers’ experience within your organization
• Improve the effectiveness of the sales and service organizations
• Identify your most effective marketing messages and sellable features

Innovation Games will be indispensable for anyone who wants to drive more successful, customer-focused product development: product and R&D managers, CTOs and development leaders, marketers, and senior business executives alike.

From the Back Cover

Innovation Through Understanding^sm

 

The toughest part of innovation? Accurately predicting what customers want, need, and will pay for. Even if you ask them, they often can’t explain what they want. Now, there’s a breakthrough solution: Innovation Games. Drawing on his software product strategy and product management consulting experience, Luke Hohmann has created twelve games that help you uncover your customers’ true, hidden needs and desires.

 

You’ll learn what each game will accomplish, why it works, and how to play it with customers. Then, Hohmann shows how to integrate the results into your product development processes, helping you focus your efforts, reduce your costs, accelerate time to market, and deliver the right solutions, right from the start.

• Learn how your customers define success
• Discover what customers don’t like about your offerings
• Uncover unspoken needs and breakthrough opportunities
• Understand where your offerings fit into your customers’ operations
• Clarify exactly how and when customers will use your product or service
• Deliver the right new features, and make better strategy decisions
• Increase empathy for the customers’ experience within your organization
• Improve the effectiveness of the sales and service organizations
• Identify your most effective marketing messages and sellable features

Innovation Games will be indispensable for anyone who wants to drive more successful, customer-focused product development: product and R&D managers, CTOs and development leaders, marketers, and senior business executives alike.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (September 7, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321437292
• ISBN-13: 978-0321437297
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.8 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #61,571 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars find the unknown unknowables, September 12, 2006

By	W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play (Paperback)

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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Better Understand Your Customer and Discover Great Products, May 1, 2009

By	John Gibbon "johngibbon.com" (Oakland, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play (Paperback)

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.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gets to the Creative part of the Brain, February 21, 2007

By	Geri Winters "coach, mentor, author" (USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play (Paperback)

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.