innovation games

Dinosaur thinking

  • Tuesday, 6 April, 2010
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When Autotrader developed their cool and innovative iPhone app, they presumedly never paused to think what the DVLA would think.

Let’s say you are waiting at the traffic lights and you see a car you like and you think to yourself ‘I’d like one of those’ With the Autrotrader app all you need do was take a photo of the reg plate.  From that, details of the make and model would appear and similar cars for sale close to you your current proximity would be displayed.  Sadly, this functionality has been canned.  Autotrader say:

The DVLA has requested that Auto Trader remove the image recognition element of the iPhone application. Although the app in no way infringes data privacy regulations, the ‘snap’ function conflicts with the DVLA’s code of ethics, as it allows consumers to capture images of vehicle license plates.

This is the same government agency with ethics that enables it to sell drivers details.  That’s an aside.  Perhaps the DVLA’s  is more concerned with avoiding the trouble they got over Castrol using number plate recognition for interactive advertising.

With localisation being championed as one of the hottest topics of 2010 combined with the ubiquitous use of camera phones, it is clear that technology and the opportunities that it brings are moving at a faster pace than the ‘public opinion’ (read Daily Mail Opinion) that the DVLC is clearly running scared of.
So what?

So when you are envisioning and playing innovation games, have a session where you play devils advocate and tease out what angry from Tunbridge wells would think.  Kill your idea as many ways as you can.  Can you identify risks you’d otherwise missed (such as DVLA’s dinosaur thinking), or does it uncover new ideas or alternative ways of doing things (to bring out a cheesy quote from Benjamin Franklin “out of adversity comes opportunity”).  There is of course always another alternative,  to leave the innovation to others, for others to face the wrath of Government quangos and follow fast.  But that is a blog post for another time.

This much I know

  • Wednesday, 31 March, 2010
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The Observer magazine has a feature titled “This much I know“. It takes an interview with a celebrity who “share the lessons life has taught them” and distills it down into a number of key statements. There is probably some milage in this as an innovation game to play when you are looking for ideas and insights, hopes and fears from a newly formed team.

Ask team members to write statements “this much I know” on post-it notes with Sharpies (because you can’t write many words like that) and see what you get.

For structure you may consider using different coloured post-its to represent PEST themes: Political, Social, Environmental and Technical, or how about CRIT:

  • C: Competitive landscape
  • R: Return on investment
  • I: Internal politics
  • T: Technology.

So for example…

This much I know

Acme.com recently redesigned their website. The  forums and twitter were full of positive comments (C)
People will pay for content. It’s just got to be priced right, relevant and timely to them and easy to pay  (R)
Getting things done here is a nightmare. The process to get approval for any new project is designed to be hard (I)
We’ve got problems with our CMS. Our license is due to expire and the vendor is trying to get us to upgrade. We don’t know what to do (T)

Getting these ideas on the wall will help participants articulate their thoughts and provide a framework for understanding the current reality and mining for new ideas and opportunities.

Innovation games

  • Wednesday, 6 January, 2010
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Innovation games are a great way of engaging stakeholders, getting them to collaborate and think creatively around solutions to problems. Here are a few I’ve recently used. Introducing a persona helps focus the attention.

What happens if?
Ask participants to construct a back story for the persona. What have they done in the last year. Describe each touch point they have had with your brand or product. Now introduce a crisis moment. Lost a job, got a terminal illness, won the lottery. What happens? How does the experience with each touch point change?

Build a widget
Again, give the group a persona to help focus their attention. Now give them half an hour to build a widget that would solve a problem the persona has. Give them paper, post-its sharpies, coloured pencils. This is agile right. Now present back – They get two minutes to provide the context, pitch the product. Then one minute to demonstrate how the widget works. Open the widget to questions. How will it work….

You’re all crooks
<Insert your industry> are crooks. What new laws would you introduce to clean up their act? (OK, this feels uncomfortable but it may help get people thinking about how consumers perceive the industry and how the customer experience could be improved. For example you are crooks because you hide details in small print, introduce a new law on transparency. What would that mean you would change?)

Kill the sacred cows
Every business has sacred cows or elephants in the room; things that are done because they’ve always been done, not to be challenged, considered immune from criticism or are too risky or dangerous to change. Ask participants to identify these, putting them on post-it notes. Now imagine that they no-longer exist. What could you do now that you couldn’t do when the sacred cows were in place?

Put some fun back into your business

  • Friday, 23 October, 2009
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Litter bins on the street aren’t the most interesting of objects.  The design is pretty standard, with variations on a couple of themes – cylindrical or rectangle and colour being the primary tool of differentiation.

“To throw rubbish in the bin instead of onto the floor shouldn’t really be so hard. Many people still fail to do so. Can we get more people to throw rubbish into the bin, rather than onto the ground”

One answer is to make it more fun.  Check out The FunTheory for other ways of improving mundane products by making them fun.

Now think about that mundane product of yours.  Maybe it is your on-line retail bank.  It is getting tired and it is time for a technology refresh.  You’re going through a process of capturing requirements.  How about playing an innovation game, but base it on the concept of fun.  What could you introduce to your product that would make people smile?  What would make people laugh?  OK, so after a while the bin would no longer be fun.  What makes it fun is the element of surprise.  Again, what could you drop into the product that would surprise people.  What would a ‘fun’ internet bank look like?  Focus on fun and surprise and you might uncover a nugget of inspiration that will make the final product.