Are You Ready to be Innovation Games-Certified?   

Those attending the Innovation Games Summit in January got a preview of one of the biggest developments coming to the Innovation Games community--the Innovation Games Certified Collaboration Architect Program. After years of requests (by our customers, partners and students), we're launching the Certification Program to help companies using Innovation Games (and related techniques) find the skilled partners they need to be successful. And to help our Certified Collaboration Architects find more engagements and more opportunities to put innovation Games to work.

The certification program focuses on skill, and incorporates training, facilitation and production experience (both online and in-person). Be on the lookout for more details on how you can join in. 

Oh Shit! to Oh Wow! in 30 Minutes  

Luke Hohmann 

A few weeks ago the the Innovation Games team was facilitating a Customer Advisory Board (CAB) meeting for Rackspace. While preparing for the meeting, we had designed brand new game, Dozens of Diamonds, which asks participants to add gemstones to an empty brooch to create a truly valuable piece of jewelry. In this game, the brooch represented the Rackspace Enterprise and Cloud offerings portfolio, and gemstones represented aspects of functionality that would make the brooch truly valuable to Rackspace's customers.

After the game had started, I noticed that Joanne, an Observer and one of the Rackers involved in the event production, had been taking a tremendous amount of notes. During a break, I walked over and thanked her for her help, as Observers are a critically important element of a successful Innovation Game® event--especially those focusing on market insight. It was her reply, however, that really got me smiling.

"Luke, this game is great!" she expounded. "I'm getting so many insights and taking so many notes that my hand is getting tired! I gotta be honest, though: When I walked into the room and saw the brooch on the wall and the junk on table, [paper, pens, scissors, tape, stickers, and other materials], I thought to myself 'Oh Shit. This is going to be some stupid arts and crafts team-building thing.' But, this is totally awesome. Our customers are really into the game, and I can't believe the feedback.  You took me from 'Oh Shit' to 'Oh Wow' in 30 minutes!"

The 1st Innovation Games Summit was Awesome!   

It's been a month since more than 100 Innovation Games Fans converged at the first ever Innovation Games Summit in Santa Clara, CA, and we're still  buzzing with excitement. The two day Summit was packed with real world stories of of how serious games are doing serious work--every day (more than two dozen sessions, keynotes and panels, and included the first-ever Innovation Games Certification courses. (More on that later.)   

If you couldn't attend, don't fret. We did manage to videotape a few of the sessions, and several attendees also shared their conference play-by-play. Here's the rundown:

  

Watch What Happened: Video 

Serena Software's Kevin Parker

Serena Software's Kevin Parker shared how Knowsy is being used by the Serena Marketing t

eam to learn about customer priorities and drive revenue--all through the power of play. 

Kaiser Permanente's Leading Innovation Game

Roll Out by Infection at Rackspace

Not to be outdone, Rackspace's Tony Wolf let attendees know about his company's Racktivity Room, a room dedicated to solely to serious game play.

Sue Kim Wants to Party  

Sue Kim's take on the Innovation Games Summit is titled "I Wanna Party Like It's 2001", and she zeroes right in on Tom Grant's closing keynote, "It's Time to Change the Rules of Work."  

The Innovation Games Summit wasn't the only big event in January. Many of the attendees stayed on for the third annual Budget Games event for the City of San Jose, CA. The event was our largest Budget Games yet, with 40 facilitators and observers--some of whom came from as far as Sweden, Canada and the UK--and a 120 local residents.  

Julia Feng was our graphic facilitator, capturing the comments of those playing the Budget Games as the day progressed.

Our hat's off to the Innovation Games community for donating their time to help the citizens of San Jose. The Budget Games could not have been possible without their committment to spend their Saturday helping the citizens of San José prioritize the budget.

 

Getting people involved in the decision making 

process can be quite a challenge, but the City of San José has a successful 3-year track record of partnering with Innovation Games® 

to pull its citizens out of their homes and into City Hall for the Budget Games. Mark McGregor facilitated at this year's games and highlights his experience here.  "It was equally impressive to watch how people changed their perceptions based upon new inputs from other players," explains McGregor. 

Building a Better Budget

Andrea & Andy Simon, Innovation Games Qualified Instructors, came for New York to volunteer at the Budget Games. Andrea writes in her blog post on the event, "What is so interesting about these games is that Andy and I had different roles to play at different tables and each table went about the games differently. Mine decided to agree to the revenue and cost issue first, so that they knew how much money they had to work with. His went after the

From Breaking Barriers to Better Focus Groups 

One of best parts of putting this newsletter together each month is unearthing how Innovation Games are changing how people do work, all over the world. This month we have an interview with Luke Hohmann in Sandhill.com, Product Boxes and Meetups in Chicago, and comments on improving focus groups and more ...  

Collaboration, Innovation & Decision-Making 

Kathleen Goolsby, managing editor of sandhill.com, interviewed CEO & Founder Luke Hohmann recently, covering how the games are applied in market research, collaboration, civic engagement and more. You can read the entire interview here, but first, some highlights. 

Games Eliminate Barriers:  Hohmann revealed how the online games helped HP involve more than 600 people from around the world and they each had equal voice:  "In the game," a participant revealed, "I was playing with three people from China, two people from India and three from places scattered around the U.S. It was the first time that we came together in real time, without a phone call," [which puts people who are not native English-language speakers at a disadvantage]. "And the game structure gave me equal power with the other players." 

Decisions Around Innovation:  "Yahoo! tapped into the games approach for a market research initiative seeking to understand the best way to ensure its Yahoo! Finance home page redesign addressed worldwide users' needs and wants. We assembled a global team of game facilitators who speak the languages native to each location Yahoo! wanted to research."

Fun with Focus Groups

Designing Interactions for Fun

Product Boxes & Landing Pages