Archive for the ‘Case Example’ Category

Why play a game? Because games are about rules

But can you put rules on creativity?

“Say something funny.” It’s a comedian’s worst nightmare. “Go on — I don’t want to fence you in, say anything.” Why doesn’t this work?

“Say anything” creates a mental block as you try to think of a subject, a theme, an issue. But games are about rules, and when we’re feeling rebellious, we come up with crafty workarounds. Creativity is about breaking, challenging, and reshaping rules and conventions, not ignoring them.

When we have too much room to roam, we end up focusing on things that have worked in the past. And that’s fine — we all stand on the shoulders of giants. But we tend to stay safe, take our time, and end up with strategies that aren’t very exciting. Ideas end up as design by committee, and those rarely result in anything visionary.

No, when we want excitement, we want to see MacGyver build an escape mechanism we never thought possible, using chewing gum and a shoelace — that’s a thrill.

When you’re asked to “be creative”, you end up using your mental energy coming up with a problem to solve, when what you really want is to be laser-focused on coming up with a range of solutions.

What you need are concrete problems. So we give you poker, and poker gives you problems.

Inventorium Poker is unlike any game of actual poker you’ve played or seen, but “Inventorium Blackjack” sounded a little too dangerous, and Inventoriumopoly was a bit on the acquisitive side for us.

How does Inventorium Poker work?

Don’t worry, you can’t lose your shirt, your house, or your wedding ring.

We give each group of participants a deck of cards that fit the context of the event. For example, when we had a Mobile Apps workshops we gave each team a deck of cards.

There was a set for contexts, a set for people, and a set for technologies. You might have chosen the context “mountaintop”, “hospital” or “school”, each of which would bring its own challenge to the people for whom you’d be developing, who could be “older people”, “ramblers”, or “teachers”. And then technology types, which in this case were all mobile technologies, like “GPS”, “MMS”, or “video”.

From these cards, groups are quickly able to spark the problems that lead to truly creative ideas that are targeted at the appropriate users in the right context, and that use the right technology — that gives us something to start evaluating commercially.

We encourage participants to use Inventorium Poker to entertain all the ideas that spring to mind, even the daft ones — sometimes the most ridiculous, impossible idea can be hammered into a practical, useful one.

Groups come up with a series of ideas that seem like they’re worth exploring, and then they present them to the larger group. From there, each individual chooses the project they wish to work on, which means that you’re not stuck with only the idea of your initial team. We want people to go where their skills and interests are. Our open innovation model means that ideas shared with the group are shared. It doesn’t mean you have to give up your best stuff. In fact, the more you work with your idea, the more it is reshaped and reenvisioned into one that might be one step closer to reality, for you, and for your potential customers and users.

Think fast!

When you want to be creative, don’t give your brain time to think about thinking — just do! People don’t solve problems because they have the time and space to do so, they do it because they have no other option.

And we work fast because the more we let our doubts creep in, the more we second-guess the quality of an idea before we explore it, the safer our ideas get. But our job as an innovation intermediary is to take calculated risks — we make a venture less risky by crash-testing ideas and business plans. Once the brainstorm is down on paper, that’s when we can start to determine if an idea is a realistic business proposition.

We use Inventorium Poker — among lots of other strategies — to give you the boundaries and the sense of urgency that force you to rely on your ingenuity, rather than your tested experience. Experience certainly helps when it comes to evaluating concepts, but first you need the ideas.

Make them as exciting as you want! They might just be possible.

Got an idea for a game we can adapt for our events? Let us know!

In the build up to next weeks workshop in Coleg Harlech it was interesting to read about some novative approaches being taken with the youth of America; Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel is conducting a high-profile experiment: Put $100,000 apiece in the hands of 24 entrepreneurial teenagers and give them free rein to pursue innovative ideas.

The condition? They have to leave their studies and classmates, and vow to stay out of college during the two-year fellowship.

Thiel’s endorsement has been followed by some quick successes; Eden Full, 19, won a $260,000 social entrepreneurship award for her efforts to improve solar energy in developing countries. Dale Stephens, 20, landed a Penguin deal for his book Hacking Your Education.

With startup success stories tempting undergraduates to quit, universities have raced to add entrepreneurship to their curricula. Stanford has StartX, an accelerator for student-run startups. Similarly, last year UC Berkeley created FounderSchool, which prepares students to raise venture money. James G. Boyle, managing director of the Entrepreneurial Institute at Yale University (which lost four undergraduate students to Thiel fellowships) agrees that more colleges should help kids start companies, but he says that most students benefit from an environment where they can test ideas without betting their future.

Read the full article here

In contrast there are examples that the potential to innovate improves with age, Vivek Wadhwa of the Technology Review writes; the young understand the limits of the Web world, but they don’t know their own limits. It’s proving to be a powerful combination. Since they don’t know what isn’t possible, the Zuckerbergs can come up with new solutions to old problems. That is why they lead the charge in starting innovative mobile and Web companies.

But great ideas by themselves don’t lead to breakthrough technologies or successful companies. Ideas are dime a dozen. The value comes from translating ideas into inventions and inventions into successful ventures. To do this, you have to collaborate with others, obtain financing, understand markets, price products, develop distribution channels, and deal with rejection and failure. In other words, you need business and management skills and maturity. These come with education, experience, and age.

Read the full article here

Having worked with both the youth and the more senior amongst us – surely the way forward is to combine the experience of one with the unlimited potential of the other. In Wales we have mentoring schemes but maybe we need to look at taking this a step further?

Can we be methodical in applying imagination? Cynefin is a framework for knowledge management.  It is a method for thinking about how to find solutions to problems.  This provides Inventorium, an open innovation project,  with a tool to help its stakeholders.

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