Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play

Playing the Game

This game works best when the facilitator lets customers know that during the game they will be asked to comment on a variety of features, some of which they might consider "funny" or "outrageous." Doing so will slightly reduce the degree of cognitive dissonance customers experience, because they have been preconditioned, but often helps to increase the number of ideas that they attempt to transform because they are more aligned with the fun element of the game.

The facilitator presents each feature to customers and invites them to respond in one of three ways:

• Accept the feature as is with no changes.

• Reject the feature outright as something they don't want.

• Transform the feature into a new feature that is something that they do want.

Customers will often transform outrageous features into an existing feature with a more desirable set of attributes, as I did when I transformed the fountain pen that could cut glass into a fountain pen with a stronger and/or longer lasting nib. This process might give you understanding into my desire for a stronger and/or longer lasting nib, but it doesn't give you sufficient insight into the underlying problem or need that is driving this transformation. To really understand your customers, you're going to have to ask them to explain their transformations. In my case, you would find that although I once owned a fountain pen, a colleague borrowed it and dropped it on the floor, irreparably damaging the nib.