Daily Archives: June 5, 2008

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FPS Strategy for Innovation

What’s the connection between video games and innovation strategy?  In an FPS (First Person Shooter) game like Halo 3, you can save your current game status and keep trying new approaches to solving a difficult problem until you eventually find something that works.  This ongoing problem solving exercise demands keen awareness, game experience, trial and error experimentation, and continuous improvement (Kai-zen).  On the higher difficulty settings, some levels can be nearly impossible but with a lot of evolutionary innovation and some brute force, you can usually figure out how to beat the level.  This concept of immortality allows the gamer to keep trying new ideas without real risk.  The keys in gaming, as in innovation, are patience and perseverance.  If employees can do their jobs and develop new ideas without risking their jobs, they might create some breakthrough products – just like reaching the end of the level! 

Innovate or die is really more like innovate AND die many times until you figure out a way to succeed!

For more posts on Creativity and Innovation processes – click here.

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Brainstorming 101 – Seeing the Now and the Future

Before unleashing ones creativity, it’s worth taking a pause to understand the people who will be buying and using the actual product. Knowing what motivates their purchase and what they value in a product are key points to understand for the designer. But we also need to remember that this information is only in the ‘now’. We also need to forecast into the future because people and the world around us may change – or stay the same. Here are some useful tools to consider in the design of new products and before brainstorming new ideas:

Trend scanning – understanding social, economic, technological, fashion, geo-political, and other macro level trends and how they will change the market and people within it.  For a more ‘street’ level look if it’s been awhile…  you can hire so called ‘Cool Hunters’ or style gurus who have their pulse on the latest trends and styles. 

Video Ethnography – Video studies of how customers interact with their products during everyday life in their everyday environment.

Give them a Camera and Scrapbook – Giving customers a camera so they can photograph the key things they find valuable, motivating, exciting, necessary, inconvenient, innovative, etc.  This can also be a collage of objects or images from the customers life.

Immersion in the Customer Environment – Spending time living how the customer lives and using products as the customer would.  For example, I heard that when Toyota was launching Lexus, they sent a team of designers to southern California to live the country club lifestyle.

Future Scenario Alternatives and Immersion – Developing several alternative views of the world based on trend forecast and expected events.  For example, we may find ourselves in a world with a severe energy shortage where everything is given in order to secure energy at the expense of the environment, peace, etc.  The brainstorming team is then immersed in the future and imagines what they will need and want in terms of products.

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New Business Idea – The Eat by the Pound Restaurant

Airlines are seriously considering charging customer by how much they weigh as fuel costs soar.  On the surface, it’s a pay as you go model but is it really fair?  Or is it fair that lighter customers are ‘subsidizing’ heavier customers?  So I was wondering then if this could be applied to a restaurant concept.  The Eat by the Pount restaurant would charge you by the weight of the food you eat.  You step on a scale and get a weight reading when you arrive and you get another reading when you leave.  Your bill is calculated based on your increase in weight.  Of course there are lots of potential issues with this concept.  How would you adjust for going to the bathroom for example?  Anyway, I thought it was an interesting concept and would make for an interesting theme restaurant.  Imagine a large digital display over the entrance or at your table that show how much you weight and how much you eat by the pound.  Just like your treadmill displays how many calories you burn, this restaurant would display how many calories you took in!  A system could record each patrons weight as they arrive.  The system would also calculate the weight delta when checking out — with discounts offered to customers who gained the most weight in the shortest amount of time!  That would really encourage some healthy eating…