Using Innovation Games® Online to Reach Consensus in Distributed Triple Helix Teams

Luke HohmannFounder and CEO

The Innovation Games® Company

Twitter: #innovgames

The Process: Ideation, shaping, Prioritizing, Acting

Innovation Requires Others

Distributed Teams Need Tools

How Do I Help My City Grow?

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/jonah-art-model-of-small-city-700px.jpg

Industry

UniversityGovernment

What Creates, Causes, Enables, and Promotes Innovation?

Remember, we’re talking innovation.

Invention is thinking up cool stuff. Innovation is successfully applying the inventions in practice.

Collaborative Innovation Lies In Spaces

Industry

UniversityGovernment

Innovation Innovation

Inn

ovatio

n

7

Let’s Find Out Who You Talk WithDraw a circle. Write your name in the center of the circle.

Pick a Triple Helix project you’ve worked on or studied.

Write the names of people you collaborated with on this project around the circle. Draw the web of these relationships as you see it. Use different line weights and colors to represent good/bad communication.

Spider Web

8

Let’s Do It Again

Draw a circle Write your name in the center of the circle.

Using your first diagram as a guide, replace the names of the people with their Triple Helix roles. Use different line weights and colors to represent good/bad communication.

Spider Web

Collaboration is more than talking…

So, what’s Collaboration?

Collaboration is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together in an intersection of common goals — for example, an intellectual endeavor that is creative in nature—by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus.

Thanks, wikipedia!

It’s not the platform

But tools and platforms are important!!!

Is it about me?

It’s not about me… but I am important…

https://jazz.net/downloads/pages/rational-team-concert/2.0/M3/images/apt_tempo.png

It’s not “sharing”

But we need to share to collaborate. http://www.inf.unisi.ch/postdoc/lelli/imgIndexArticle/social_network.jpg

But notifications are important.But we need to be notified of changes.

It’s

not

notifications

It’s not just “talking”

Maybe…It is the tools?

Collaboration DOES Need Tools

collocated distributed

Different Time

SameTime

Innovation Games® are Serious Collaboration Tools.

What Are Innovation Games®

Innovation Games® are serious games that solve a wide range of product strategy and management problems across the market lifecycle.

They are played: • with customers & internal stakeholders• online or in-person• within or across organizational units• in single or multi-game formats

Not Humor Like Joke

Not Silly Like Water Park

More LikeSettlers of Catan &

EuchreMeet Business

Not Work(Leisure)

Pleasure

Work

Play

Not-Play

External GoalsInternal Goals

Not-P

leasure

Adapted from http://it.coe.uga.edu/~lrieber/resources/blanchardmodel.gif

And yes, it is FUNV1-388 Luke Did you enjoy this experience?V1-388 Toni Yes - fun!V1-388 Greg Sure.V1-388 Greg I enjoyed it.V1-388 Vladimir thanks for the chance. B)V1-393 Luke Did you enjoy the experience? Would you be willing to play again in the

future?

V1-393 Tom yes, and yesV1-393 Mike Yes -- it was funV1-393 Sarah DefinitelyV1-393 Dominic Yes, and I think VersionOne are getting great info here

V1-393 Patrick I would be happy to play again.V1-394 Luke Team, are you now satisfied with your bids?V1-394 Mike YES!V1-394 Rene yupV1-394 Andre Indeed.V1-394 Jim I want more money!V1-394 Andre It was hard. But lots of fun. And yes, I want more money too - do you

take credit cards?

V1-394 Mike hahahaV1-394 Mike ok, gotta go guys.... it was fun

Chat log extracts from three games played to prioritize a

product backlog.

Innovation and Collaboration Goals

Manage strategic

roadmaps.

Identify New Products

Determine Product Interactions

Train Sales Teams

NPD ImproveMarketing Messages

PrioritizeProject Portfolio

Identify ProductEnhancements

Prioritize Epics NPD

Enterprise Goals ARE Verbs

Verbs mean ACTION

To take Action we need to:• Create goals and/or

equifinal meanings• Reduce ambiguity• Reduce equivocality

• Identify, distribute, perform, integrate, verify…

Special Communication Problems in Distributed Teams

• Language• Culture• Cold communication• Time shifting takes a toll

Innovation Games® Case Studies

San Jose, CA Budget Games

Chief Intellectual Property Officer

Damon Matteo, PARC

Beatrix de Russé, Thomson Marshall Phelps, Microsoft

Rob Sterne, SKGFAnne Culotta, Halliburton

Scrum is an agile framework for completing complex projects. Scrum originally was formalized for software development projects, but works well for any complex, innovative scope of work.

The ScrumAlliance hired The Innovation Games® Company to research member needs.

• 5 Games• 35 participants • 100 potential apples• 81 unique apples• Rich online discussions• Each game ~1 hour

Field: Football Field divided into Health Sectors called “Indicators”.Indicators: Actions in the game will reflect the Status of Health.

Moving across the field records a change in status depending on the scenario. A Layer with Action Indicators can be turned on and off during play.

RED = HEALTHY Choices, Outcomes or DecisionsWHITE = NEGATIVE Influences, Outcomes or DecisionsFOOTBALL = INDICATOR OF HEALTH of the person or family

Field w/o Indicators Field with Indicators

EXAMPLE TO OTHERSTHRIVING

GREAT HEALTHGOOD HEALTH

1ST SIGN OF ILLNESSSERIOUS ILLNESS

CRITICALSUFFERING & DEATH

HEALTH TO HEALTH CARE – H E A LT H A S T E A M S P O RT

22

22

1

Michael Dinneen, M.D. Director, Office of Strategy Management

Military Health System

A GAME IN PROGRESSItem

Information:Players fill in a

description of the Role & Action when the play is started or

changed

Player Action Detail

All PlayerActions captured as the game

progresses

Track Team Players / Plays= Total minus # on

the field

Players move in 1 + “Roles / Situations”

to Aid or Counter HEALTH

CHAT DURING THE

GAME

How Do I Help My City Grow?

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/jonah-art-model-of-small-city-700px.jpg

Industry

UniversityGovernment

Our 3-Step Process

Open-ended, collaborative innovation. E.g. Prune the Product Tree to collaboratively generate ideas.

Collaboration tools (such as wikis and forums) to shape ideas.E.g., Google docs

Picking High ROI Projects / Features.E.g. Buy a Feature tournaments to collaboratively prioritize projects and take action.

Ideation Shaping Prioritizing

Prune the Product Tree: City Growth

Understand the evolution of your offering.

• Draw a tree. It represents the growth of your city.

• Add current ideas on how to grow as apples and apples.

• 5 to 8 stakeholders shape the “growth” of your offering.

• Captures very rich information about perceptions of the future, timing of new concepts, balance, and relationships among ideas.

Prune the Product Tree Online: Preparing

Planners define layers and regions so that they will know where players

are placing their ideas.

Planners choose images to represent growth.

Planners select the kind & number of items that can be placed on the

image during the game.

Place Initial Items

Any existing ideas or roadmap items are placed on the tree.

Playing the Game!Players collaborate in real-time to

place features/benefits (leaves/apples) on the tree.

An integrated chat facility enables you to understand

player motivations.

Players label and describe their ideas

All information is recorded and available for analysis

Create Interpretations from the Results of Multiple Games

Game 1 Results

Game 2 Results

Interpretation

Game results are merged into a new game – which you can edit and shape, further process, or play with additional players.

Step 2: Collaborative Shaping

• Once ideas have been identified they are shaped by the project/product teams into a backlog

• Existing tools, such as shared wikis, shared documents, emails, and chats, help teams shape concepts

• The process typically produces a candidate list of projects and/or product features that is greater than available resources

“infinite” portfolio

local projectexpensive projectbig project

other project

another project

the other thing

Step 3: Collaborative Prioritization

Common Approach Problems

Single expert Do they have the knowledge and trust of the organization to make the hard choices?

Small groups Tradeoffs are not clear

Large groups Insufficient tools!

Where is the “Voice of the Customer?“infinite” backlog

use casebug fixarch change

do this

do that

the other thing

Goal? is to take large list and prioritize to a manageable set.

Innovation Game® Buy a Feature

• A list of 12-20 items (projects) are described in terms of benefits and cost

• 5 to 8 invited stakeholders given limited “budget”, must reach consensus on projects to “buy”

• Captures very rich information about customer motivations, trade-offs, objections, actual collective needs

In-person• Provides rich opportunity for “new” ideasOnline• Captures data for sophisticated analysis of

preferences• Preliminary trials indicate faster/more accurate

results than traditional tools

Collaborative Prioritization of Key Ideas

Buy A Feature Online - Preparing

A list of features with prices. This example is for product concepts for a pair of internet

sunglasses

“Shirt Sizes” help you quickly price your

features – or you can enter a price directly!

Buy A Feature Game PlayParticipants.

Planner sets their budget.

An integrated chat facility enables you to understand participant motivations. Here, we learn that participants dislike learning a rental car’s navigation system.

Participant bids.

Highly desired items are purchased.

Buy A Feature Online - Results

Results of many games played,

sorted by number of times

purchased.

Many Ways to Play: Parties, Galas, and Tournaments

What is it? Who plays? Facilitated? Number of Items?

Number of players?

Party A “dinner party”.

You select and control participants

Yes 12..20 5..8

Gala An “open seating event”

Random participants based on a shared URL

No 12..20 9+

Tournament A combination of parties!

You control and select participants

Yes 20+ Based on number of items and number of tournaments

Tournament Structure

15

15

45

15

14

14

1

2

3

4

5

List of projects 15

Each dark square represents one game

“Winning” items are promoted each game.

Items that win the final game are the most valued items.

Play multiple tournaments with random placement of items to control for bracket strength.

Tournament Case Study: VeriSign Global Customer Support

Context 46 projects ranging from small to very large.

Problem The VeriSign leadership needed to quickly identify the high-priority, most globally supported projects.

Engagement Profile

VeriSign project managers prepared the portfolio for the games. Enthiosys structured the process into three tournaments involving ~60% of the 200 person global customer care organization and facilitated the games.

Results • Very clear separation of the “winning” projects – the original list of 46 was prioritized to the top 5 projects

• High degrees of collaboration – even when collaboration was not required to purchase an project!

• Participant chat logs provided detailed explanations behind the bidding – the meaning behind the choice.

• Participants considered the process fun.

Let’s Play!

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/jonah-art-model-of-small-city-700px.jpg

Industry

UniversityGovernment

To Learn More…

Innovation Through Understanding®

We’re happy to help you learn how Innovation Games® can help you solve complex problems.

Luke Hohmann

Founder & CEO

The Innovation Games® Company

cell: (408) 529-0319

lhohmann@innovationgames.com