Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play

Why It Works

One of the greatest challenges in creating and managing a product is creating a balanced picture of everything that must be done to be successful. The problem can be complicated by overly linear, inorganic representations of product road maps, which tend to represent product evolution as linear over time. By tapping into our understanding that products must grow in a planned way, and that products are supported by a variety of mechanisms, Prune the Product Tree allows customers to shape all aspects of the product, instead of just providing feedback on a selected set of features in a road map.

You and your customers both know that features vary in importance. We tend to want to put our efforts behind the most important featuresthose features that provide the greatest value to customers. Unfortunately, sometimes this means that we put too little effort behind the features that are needed to complete the product. The Prune the Product Tree game provides your customers with a way to provide explicit input into the decision-making process by looking at the set of features that compose the product in a holistic manner.

Prune the Product Tree also gives product teams the rare opportunity to identify, and potentially remove, those product features that are simply not meeting customer needs.

Open-Ended Exploration

Time Frame of Action

Scalability

Customer Preparation

Market Preparation

Physical Preparation