Training Innovators

Training Innovators master thesis

Using board games to increase young people’s potential to innovate

Candidate: Claudiu

Serban

Submitted on May 21st, 2013

Supervisor: Henry

Larsen

Contents Abstract Introduction 3 Early intentions and reflections 7

1. What I had in mind at the beginning.................................................................... 7 2. How did these interests come about?..................................................................... 7 3. My understanding of Games at this point ............................................................ 9 4. My understanding of Innovators............................................................................ 9 5. Chapter review and reflections.............................................................................. 11

Understanding games better 13

1. Serious Games......................................................................................................... 13 2. What are Serious Games then?............................................................................. 16 3. Serious Games, Serious Learning?........................................................................ 17 4. Understanding the value of Board Games through Play................................... 18 5. What am I after? ..................................................................................................... 22

Playing games for the fun of it 27

1. Introduction............................................................................................................. 27 2. Settlers of Catan...................................................................................................... 27 3. Bohnanza................................................................................................................. 29 4. Deeper into theories of Play.................................................................................. 30 5. Reflections on Game Design................................................................................. 33 6. Key takeaways.......................................................................................................... 34

Angel Investors.

Story of a new game 37

1. Emergence, evolution............................................................................................. 37 2. Experience from playing it.................................................................................... 38 3. Enhance learning – reflection as part of the game............................................. 40 4. Game Design considerations................................................................................. 42 5. Final thoughts from playing Angel Investors..................................................... 44

Method reflection 47 Conclusion 49 Acknowledgment 54

Abstract In this thesis I explore what is the value that games, and in particular board games, can bring for increasing the potential of young people to innovate.

The thesis is built as my development of thought went, showing how I came to focus on board games for training innovators, how I came to understand innovation and innovators, what games and serious games are and how to understand why we play.

At its core, the work takes a different and challenging approach to the mainstream literature, goes deeper to roots of play, play and learning, and innovation and comes to build on the understanding that good play (and thus good game) is fun play, and fun play means the player is learning valuable skills – often at unconscious level –, and on the idea that innovation is emerging and evolving in continuous processes of relating to each other, often arising in rather conflictual situations.

It shows how and why some qualities board games bring – e.g. perceived safe interaction space in a rule bounded environment, collaboration and competition – are conducive to learning core abilities needed for innovators, that is learning to engage in interactions with others in qualitative ways which allow themselves, the others and the ideas or practices at stake to evolve. Further, throughout my analysis of some existing games, I point to specific design elements that support (and some that don’t) the purpose of training innovators. A concrete part of the contribution is a new board game called Angel Investors, which draws from the learning acquired throughout my process. In the context of Angel Investors, an exploration is presented and suggestions are made on how learning could be enhanced through incorporating reflection as part of the game.

Training Innovators

Introduction The present thesis is about using (board) games to train abilities needed for innovators and as such, it works at the intersection of three fields:

It draws from them, combines them with a design perspective and brings contributions in two main forms: • a different way of understanding the value of (board) games in the context of training innovators and how they can be employed for this purpose • game design guidelines for the purpose presented and suggestions of further research; a game design for our purpose

As such I believe these categories of people and practices could benefit from my work: • innovation-related teachers (i.e. universities teaching innovation), • professionals focused on developing innovative potential of organizations (i.e. consultants, trainers or coaches in this field) • game designers.

The work is often on the borderline between systemic thinking and complex responsive processes. Put simple, systemic thinking works with causality (doing A causes B); a central approach is to see complexity as a system, by putting some boundaries to it and then splitting it subsystems which can be researched easier (Simon, 1962). It sees people much the same with systems, as rational autonomous individuals. There is an overall assumption that one can step outside of the system to picture it and control it. This way of thinking has worked very well in the natural sciences and engineering fields, but it poses great challenges wherever in the ‘system’ there are people. In the theory of complex responsive processes of relating Stacey (2007) has shown why one cannot see himself outside the ‘system’ and controlling it, because people ongoingly relate to each other and in this relating each is influenced and evolves in ways which cannot be predicted. One can thus only act with intention in the interactions, but cannot know the output of it. The theory of complex responsive processes of relating (Stacey, 2007)

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draws from Mead (1934) and (Elias, 1991) who show how human identity is essentially social, emerging and evolving through relating to others.

The following work presents itself as a movement of thought (Larsen, 2005; Stacey, 2007), providing accounts of how I developed my understanding of games, in particular board games, what their learning value is, how that is employed through different designs, and how the games can be used to develop essential abilities needed for innovators.

Throughout the path, my understanding of the concepts of games and play, and innovation and innovators evolves and literature is brought in to make sense of my experiences.

The work is structured in the following chapters: In Chapter 1 – Early intentions and reflection – I reflect on what interest I started the thesis with, further try to make sense of how these interests came about and then I draw in my understanding of games and innovators at that point.

In Chapter 2 – Understanding Games better – I go into understanding games better and in particular serious physical games, both from a design perspective and from a learning perspective, by playing and analyzing different games. I introduce some theory to make a demarcation between serious games, games and gamification and in the end I refine what I am after, problematizing learning in games and what core abilities are needed for innovation.

In Chapter 3 – Playing games for the fun of it – I go to understand the qualities of games built for fun for our pursuit, again through playing and analyzing; I go deeper into theories of play to understand what drives it and I draw connections between playing, fun and learning; finally I bring in game design considerations learned from both the built for fun and the serious games.

In Chapter 4 – Angel Investors. Story of a new game – I reflect on how a new game I designed came to life and evolved, with a focus on the experience and reflections from playing it; in the end I emphasize how learning presented itself for our purpose of training innovators, draw clearer connections between the design qualities and its effects for our purpose and show how reflection could be embedded in the game to trigger more learning.

In Chapter 5 – Method reflection – I reflect on the methods used, at the intersection of systemic thinking and complex responsive processes thinking.

Chapter 6 concludes my work, draws the main learning points and emphasizes the contributions.

Each chapter ends with key reflections and takeaways.

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Training Innovators

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References Elias, N. (1991). The society of individuals. UK: Cambridge Mass.

Larsen, H. (2005). Spontaneity and power: theatre improvisation as processes of change in organizations. University of Hertfordshire.

Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self and society from the standpoint of a social behaviorist. Chicago: University of Chicago.

Simon, H. A. (1962). The architecture of complexity. Proceedings of the American philosophical society, 106(6), 467-482.

Stacey, R. D. (2007). Strategic management and organisational dynamics: the challenge of complexity to ways of thinking about organisations: Prentice Hall.

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Early intentions and ref lections

1. What

I had in mind at the beginning

In the simplest and most unsophisticated way of putting it, my thoughts were: How nice would that be if we were able to develop young people’s innovating potential through playing games?

From the initial formal thesis proposal one can understand that I wanted to focus on innovation since getting better at innovating is still a major trend in the business world and subsequently in many other levels of our society including education. Thus helping to grow people’s capabilities related to innovation in a playful manner seemed a good pursuit that could generally benefit our society – after all who wouldn’t want to increase his innovating potential by playing and having fun, right? I refer to young people as young adults of 18 to 30 years old.

2. How

did these interests come about?

Looking back it seems clearer how some events influenced my interests. As far as I could consciously reflect on, some that influenced me more were some TED.com talks I have seen across time and the games or playful designs we have created in our study beforehand, as I will shortly share below.

2.a. IT Product Design In the IT Product Design study I take I was part of different projects which gradually built my understanding of games and play in general and from a designer point of view – logic, game mechanics, etc. Some of the projects were Design is a Game (Iversen & Buur, 2002) - designing a board game from a business dilemma, Tangible Business Models – engaging game-like mechanics in tangible artifacts that model a

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Training Innovators

business- and designing a playground concept. Across these and other work we’ve done we employed various playful design methods - e.g. video cards game (Buur & Soendergaard, 2000) - some of which I recently discovered fall into a category of so called design games (Vaajakallio, 2012).

2.b. TED.com talks Across time I got to see some video TED talks – TED.com brings bright people from different fields sharing bright ideas in short talks – on subjects related to play and games. Two particular talks have impressed me and I re-viewed them when starting this thesis, alongside with another interesting talk I will mention in the following.

The two initial talks were from John Hunter (2011), teacher and musician, and Jane McGonigal (2010), game designer.

John Hunter shared his experience of Teaching with the World Peace Game: John Hunter puts all the problems of the world on a 4’x5’ plywood board -- and lets his 4th-graders solve them. (Hunter, 2011)

Alongside other reflections, I noted down some keywords I related to it, which now resonate with me a lot better: exploring, engagement, social learning, feeling of contribution, feeling ‘in charge’ opposite to having the teacher in charge, no clearly designed output, how do you measure learning since it can be so diversified? Hunter says ‘you feel it’.

Jane McGonigal argued that Gaming can make a better world (McGonigal, 2010).

She pointed to the staggering amount of

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hours young people use on (video) gaming putting it into a broader picture: • 10.000 hours of practice are needed for being successful at something • 10.000 hours of gaming by the age of 21, play the average teens in countries with tradition in gamiWng • 10.000 hours is the official time in school education, through the whole cycle 1st grade-last grade (for U.S)

Some of the interesting points McGonigal made and I took note of were related to : urgent optimism: players maintain optimistic while going through failure after failure to become better and succeed at the quests given social fabric: it takes a lot of trust to play a game with someone blissful productivity: the average player in World of Warcraft computer game plays for almost 22hours per week; she points that gamers are willing to work hard if they’re given the right work

She built the case for why gaming are (for players) better than reality and why we should focus more efforts on solving real-life problems through games – how, is of course unknown yet, but she points to ongoing research she is undertaking in that direction.

Another talk sparked some reflections that in the end provided a deeper account of my interest towards play. Will Wright, a game designer who “invented a genre of computer game that involves neither winning nor shooting, yet has generated colossal hits” (e.g. The Sims), enthusiastically reflects on his interest of these types of games (Wright, 2007): “She (ref. Montessori) thought it’s very valuable for kids to discover things on their own rather than being taught these things overtly. She would design these toys where kids in playing with the toys would actually come to understand these deep principles of life and nature through play. And since they discovered these things it really stuck with them so much more and also they would experience their own failures. There was a failure based aspect to learning there. And so the games that I do (…)

I want them to be presented in a way in which kids can kind of explore and discover their own principles.” (Wright, 2007) While listening to that I come to feel quite in sync with

Early intentions and reflections

Wright. And, while I approve tacitly his ways of seeing things, I start thinking why it is I do that, how did I get to that sync.

4. My

I never attended Montessori, only few years ago I read about it. I’m intrigued of how you can learn through playing and I’m slowly, by getting introduced to new ways of understanding how learning occurs, starting to think of play as the way for educating next generations in a context where predictability of tomorrow had become quite an issue.

Working on another paper - attached as addendum VI (Serban, 2013) - which I finished while beginning the thesis, I had the chance to research more on what innovation and innovators mean, in a pursuit to identify what I called building blocks of innovators. This aimed to give me a base understanding and further support my thesis work. I will point thus to what my thinking came to be and the different streams that influenced it.

Then a stream of trying to recall how my interest in this aspect of learning by playing follows, of which I extracted mostly the end part: My approach to learning anything got to be, and to a high extent still is, taking challenges and learning while and by doing. That of course involved a lot of failing… But actually the point where I see myself, from my previous experiences, different to the approach Wright talked about is the ‘play’ part. I think my attitude towards these things I’ve done had mostly not included play; I was always pretty serious when taking a challenge. In fact, if I think about it, I was and still am relatively rigid and serious even in more or less playful situations and interactions with others.

Maybe involuntarily that is why I am interested in understanding more ‘play’ – so that I can develop and learn more while having fun. Then again, interestingly enough, it seems like I’m trying to understand better ‘play’ by using the same kind of rational method of getting to know stuff, method that never really worked before in understanding ‘play’.

understanding of Innovators

I took innovation as socially constructed and argued that though there isn’t _a_ recipe of how innovation happens and what innovators do, innovation is highly related to context and to social interaction and being able to get engaged in contexts or social interactions in ways which have high potential for driving innovation assumes some core characteristics of a person. As a partial view of building blocks of innovators, I pointed towards:

3. My

Open minded – the innovator is able to create, bridge ideas and cope with risks and change;

I have mostly an embodied, practice-based understanding of what games are and how they are designed.

Makes it happen – gets ideas implemented to reality and has the drive and persistence to initiate and follow through until things happen;

understanding of Games at this point

Games are a structured way of playing, happening in the boundaries of some rules and of specific time-space limits.

They use different mechanics and elements to drive playfulness, though combining these properly for the latter pursue is more an art than a science.

Knows and understands – has more broad knowledge and learns new things easily; Connects with people – is able to work with others, and to participate in human interactions and conversations in qualitative ways which allow influencing himself, the others, the ideas and practices at stake.(Serban, 2013)

I was mostly influenced by Denning, Dunham, and Brown’s thinking (2010)

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Training Innovators

– borderline with system thinking approach - and Fonseca’s view through a complex responsive processes lens (J. Fonseca, 2002).

Mapping out the existing paradigms in the literature about innovation Denning et al. (2010) point to four main categories:

support of this shift they show compelling examples of Inventions that did not become innovations, Innovations by someone other than the inventor, Innovations without an obvious inventor, etc.

They propose as innovator’s way, a person’s development at these practices: The main work of invention 1. Sensing 2. Envisioning The main work of adoption 3. Offering 4. Adopting 5. Sustaining The environment for the other practices 6. Executing 7. Leading 8. Embodying

While they later on argue these are “ fundamentally conversations” and “each practice is manifested as a conversation that the innovator engages Figure 1-1.Four main paradigms of innovation (Denning et al., 2010, p.53) with and moves towards completion”, their approach still bears a strong systemEach belief assumes ways in which an ic understanding, arguing and showing examples of these innovator should approach innovation practices in action in a very sequential way. and what he should be good at – e.g. for innovation seen as manageable process, I would see these practices coming into play in more unprethe innovator has to skillfully apply exdictable sequences that can only identified as sequences in isting models of how to do innovation hindsight. For example, let’s assume a person wants to inand customize them in the organization. troduce a service he thought of already:

In The innovator’s way Denning et al.

(2010) argue for innovation as “new practice adopted by a community”.

While the concept of innovation is deeply linked with novelty, they distinguish themselves by much of the mainstream literature through supporting a shift in focus from invention to adoption. In

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While talking with another that is not even part of the envisioned target community, the initiator changes his thoughts of what the value of his idea is, his new way of thinking brings a new view on the community he wanted to address and so he’s able to spot (sense) a new opportunity (disharmony) that he could address by tweaking slightly his service.

Already here he steps into a way of future-making thinking, envisioning the tweak and testing it simultaneously; he tests it on how he simulates in his mind that the community would react when he would introduce the service to them, based on how he understands that community.

Early intentions and reflections

These happen all in the moment and shape the innovator as they shape the object of innovation and influence what next steps the innovator might take.

Fonseca (2002) on the other hand draws from theory of complex responsive processes of relating (Stacey, 2000) and points how, though in different ways, mainstream innovation literature pictures innovation as something that can be controlled by human, for which ‘humans can purposefully design, in advance, the conditions under which innovation will occur’.

Pointing to a different direction, he shows how innovations emerge and evolve in communicative interactions without having a blueprint, and that these are not controllable.

5. Chapter

review and reflections

could learn more while having fun.

I have mostly an embodied knowledge about games, and I understand them as rule-bounded play.

I see innovation close to the definition: “new practice adopted by a community” (Denning et al., 2010), but understood as essentially emerging and transforming in interactions between people. The range of abilities I look to develop is wide: open minded; makes things happen; knows and understands – both broad and specific knowledge; connects with people.

I seek to understand how (physical) games can contribute to developing (young) people’s abilities related to innovating potential.

5.a. Gaps and struggles. Sources of interest In an attempt to come closer to how my interest in the topics of the thesis emerged, I come to find triggers in earlier projects I were engaged in related to physical games and in few bright talks from TED.com. The triggers seem to be essentially manifested as gaps and struggles in myself understanding the why – why some games work and bring a positive impact to its players in various topics and manners, how designers can create a good game with a purpose, though cannot truly anticipate how it will be played – and in the end I come to see my involuntary interest in the topic as a deeper desire to be able to learn more while having fun.

5.b. Key points at this stage My interest towards applying games for learning came from small struggles I had in understanding how games can work for having a positive (learning) impact on players, and at deeper level I am trying to get a sense of how one (and I)

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References Buur, J., & Soendergaard, A. (2000). Video card game: an augmented environment for user centred design discussions. Proceedings of DARE 2000 on Designing augmented reality environments, Elsinore, Denmark.

Denning, P., Dunham, R., & Brown, J. S. (2010). The Innovator’s Way: Essential Practices for Successful Innovation: Mit Pr. Fonseca, J. (2002). Complexity and Innovation in Organizations. London: Routledge.

Hunter, J. (Producer). (2011). Teaching with the World Peace Game. TED2011. [Filmed talk] Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/john_hunter_on_the_world_peace_game.html Iversen, O. S., & Buur, J. (2002). Design is a game: Developing design competence in a game setting. Proceedings of the 7th Biennial Participatory Design Conference. http://itee.uq.edu.au/~pig/docs/Designisagame.pdf McGonigal, J. (Producer). (2010, 2013). Gaming can make a better world. [Filmed talk] Retrieved from http:// www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html Serban, C. (2013). Building blocks of innovators. SPIRE. University of Southern Denmark. Sonderborg.

Stacey, R. (2000). Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics, 3rd edn. London: Financial Times-Prentice Hall.

Vaajakallio, K. (2012). Design games as a tool, a mindset and a structure. (Doctoral Dissertation), Aalto University. Retrieved from https://www.taik.fi/kirjakauppa/images/3d992250406635fa332bb836e8c8d0ea.pdf Wright, W. (Producer). (2007, 2013). Spore, birth of a game. TED2007. [Filmed talk] Retrieved from http:// www.ted.com/talks/will_wright_makes_toys_that_make_worlds.html

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Understanding games better

1. Serious

Games

1.a. Creating a base understanding of game design and learning

elements

Since I wanted to see how games can contribute to the development of innovation related skills, my attention went into games that have demonstrated to trigger learning or at least insightful conversations (which in my view means anyway a type of learning).

A first game I reviewed is called The Venture Tower Game (Groskovs, 2011), which seems to be more at the intersection of games and tangible business models (Mitchell & Buur, 2010). It is based on an existing game – Jenga®. At the begining, each player is given a brick tower of a specific color (ref.

“Figure 2-1.”), where the tower represents their company and the bricks are resources. Then, in a staged process bounded by rules, it invites the participants to invest resources from their own company into a joint venture, for in a later stage to be able to extract back resources from the joint venture. The game pieces - bricks - are very abstract, the only differentiation between them being the color.

Figure 2-1.Venture Tower Game (Growskovs, 2011)

The Venture Tower game gives a very broad context from which players can start creating their identities however they want (and they negotiate), further how the joint venture tower will be built or later taken down is also something one cannot predict and the same for all the emerging discussions and reflections. The focus is on creating the context in which insightful conversations around business related topics can emerge in a playful manner, which Groskovs (2011) shows that it does.

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While the Venture Tower game was created in a research context, I wanted to grasp how companies work with games in the context of learning or innovation. One example I analyzed is a game created by Philips Design called Spark; they argue it “stimulates creativity and innovative thinking” in an article that promises much with its title - Playful innovation (Philips, 2009).

The design purpose, both as IBM states it and as i experienced while playing is to learn models and concepts in the range of Business Process Modelling (BPM).

The FUN factor is low and the motivation for playing (or continuing to play once you start) comes from exploring the role of different factors in relatively complex contexts simulating real world; in a sense, the intrinsic motivation comes from the possibility of testing different scenarios in a safe environment without facing bad consequences that bad decisions would bring. Learning happens often through trial and error.

Figure 2-2.The game Spark (Philips, 2009)

Spark is a board game played in teams during workshops.

Players take turns to step into a character’s shoes in a specific context, both character and context being randomized by rolling a dice, and then try to come up with creative ideas for that character. Based on game’s description and Philips’ comments, playfulness seems to be given by the unpredictable and often weird/funny associations of character and context, and since it’s a game, thus safe environment, participants can throw in crazier ideas than they would normally do in a day to day context (Philips, 2009).

While these two games triggered useful conversations and sparked more creative thinking, I went further to understand how games made for educational purposes are built and what their ingredients are. Reflections on two examples I found interesting are shortly brought next.

1.b. Playing serious non-board games

INNOV8 from IBM “IBM’s Innov8 is a 3-D (computer) simulation game used for teaching business skills to students and business professionals. Players, for example, learn how to eliminate waste while managing a “green” supply chain (...)”

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Figure 2-3.Innov8 from IBM

My feeling though is that something is broken in the game, what is that?

IBM reported: ‘one study found that a great lecture can improve learning by 17%, but serious games can improve learning by 108%’ (Philips, 2009)

Leaving game design to focus more on what and how learning happens, the game has all solutions embedded already. It basically presents the players a choice of routes with predefined routes.

It serves good for demonstrating and

Understanding games better

learning concepts related to BPM, but it embeds the assumption and teaches the trainee that there is _A_ good route, _A_ good solution (or maybe a few suboptimal), which can be determined with a proper analysis of given factors.

with the right choices embedded. It resembles more with a test paper with options, but an animated test paper. Each task is a new test paper. The fun factor was very low for me (former CISCO student).

Game mechanic and learning

Let’s try that in reality and see how it works: can you comprehend all the factors influencing the situation, can you gather all the data you need? Assuming you can, are you able to understand all interrelations, how each influence each other and ‘compute’ a good enough route?

Do that while the data is ‘ fresh enough’ to act on it, since world is in continuous movement. Don’t forget the people in the equation.

What any model lacks compared to real world is the complexity that human relations create, complexity which often cannot be anticipated thus cannot be modeled. Thus finally, the game is good for teaching the brain some models and patterns of BPM, but does not prepare (and rather misleads one) for the complexity social dynamics bring in businesses.

Figure 2-4.Mind Share from CISCO

There is no risk associated to choosing wrong and as such it becomes a game of fast guessing: choose an option, if it’s not right, pick something else fast enough to make points.

I think learning would occur more if there were risks associated to players’ actions, while in current built version I doubt too much learning occurs. Failure is a strong motivator in a game and it pushes for reflection and learning, so it should be more emphasized.

Mind Share from CISCO CISCO states the 2-D game Mind Share (CISCO, 2009a) was designed to reinforce networking skills and help people prepare for CISCO certification exams in a fun way. For space consideration I will only share a small part of the analysis.

The game is very information-driven It is a ‘guess the right choice’ type of game

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2. What

are Serious Games then?

mostly ignore the learning potential of physical/board games?

To better understand the games I analyzed, I had to understand better the concept of Serious Games.

2.b. Benefits of (serious) games 2.a. Concept The term coined as serious games is widely used to depict games which have a primary purpose other than pure entertainment (Susi, Johannesson, & Backlund, 2007; Wikipedia, 2007). Wikipedia places serious games in the range of simulations of real-world events or processes. Although they can be entertaining, their main purpose is to train or educate users “though it may have other purposes, such as marketing or advertisement”.

At a general level, games and simulated environments allow people to experience and thus learn from situations that would be hard or impossible to go through in real life due to safety, costs, time, etc. , as (Susi et al., 2007).

Different studies showed different benefits (serious) games can bring for an individual’s development:

Since games and play were in humans’ lives way before computers came in, and an understanding as well as examples of serious games in the before-computer era existed, I wonder how the concept of serious game became rather interchangeable with the idea of computer/video-based serious game? Though I didn’t find an answer in the literature, I think it is because of the dominance of video computer games in the games market. Nevertheless, how come we

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X X X

X X X

X

Some of the benefits cited by Susi et al.

(2007) include: “improved self-monitoring, problem recognition and problem solving, decision making, better short-term and long-term memory, and increased social skills such as collaboration, negotiation, and shared decision-making (ELSPA, 2006; Mitchell & Savill-Smith, 2004; see also Rieber, 1996)”

In the same time Susi et al. attract attention towards possible negative impacts

Physiological

“a mental contest, played with a computer in accordance with specific rules, that uses entertainment to further government or corporate training, education, health, public policy, and strategic communication objectives.“

X X X X X

Social

The concept of serious game is not new, for example “Military officers have been using war games in order to train strategic skills for a long time”(Wikipedia, 2007), but for some time it seems most definitions started to frame it as video/computer-based (de Freitas & Liarokapis, 2011; Djaouti, Alvarez, & Jessel, 2011; Susi et al., 2007). Zyda (2005) for example sees serious games as

Backlund et al. (2006) Enochsson et al. (2004) Guy et al. (2005) Radford (2000) De Lisi and Wolford (2002) Navarro et al. (2003) Squire and Steinkuehler (2005) Baldaro et al. (2004) Durkin and Barber (2002) Hong and Liu (2003)

Educational/ Informa-

We are concerned with serious games in the sense that these games have an explicit and carefully thought-out educational purpose and are not intended to be played primarily for amusement.

tional Motor skill/ spatial

There are, though, old origins of this term before computers became ubiquitous - Clark Abt discussed in his book Serious Games (Abt, 1970) the concept:

X

Understanding games better

(e.g. health issues, psycho-social issues and effects of violent computer games), pointing that it is hard to draw a clear conclusion from the existing studies due to often conflicting results. They point that research should further focus on explaining the why – why they work and are effective - and the how – how to design them, for what contexts - of the (serious) games as to utilize their learning potential to the maximum. As Van Eck (2006) points out, it doesn’t help to simply continue preaching how effective games are since that may lead to a false impression “all games are good for all learning outcomes, which is categorically not the case”.

pressure and more to things that normally would not have them (e.g. Nike+, Idea Nation,)”(Marczewski, 2013b). These game-like elements are not games, people don’t play them.

Serious games: lumosity.com (Labs, 2013) provides online

games that stimulate different aspects of cognition (e.g. memory, attention and response speed); one example of them is a game of making associations of words very fast, involving levels, points, etc.

Marczewski (2013b) offers a frame for understanding the demarcation:

2.c. Serious games, gamification,

games – boundaries?

I searched for a clearer demarcation between these concepts, as I often seen some of them used interchangeably.

My understanding of gamification came from Wikipedia (2013), as a trend or process of using game thinking or game mechanics into non-game activities and contexts to get more engagement from the participants of that activity. While as mentioned before, I see games as rule bounded play, in a broader sense designed to offer fun.

Some examples to make clearer the distinction between gamification and serious games:

Gamification: “adding progress bars to a

site to show how much of your profile you have filled in (e.g. linkedin.com), adding points, badges, leaderboards, peer

Figure 2-5.Gamification, Serious games, Games

3. Serious

Games, Serious Learning?

Looking back to the four games I reflected on in the beginning of the chapter, there are some striking differences between them, but I would call all of them Serious Games - they were built primarily for other reasons than fun.

Venture Tower provides a game frame which triggers insightful discussions around business investment related topics - some bringing into focus the human aspect of business with themes as trust, contribution, etc. -, Spark pushes participants (in workshop-like contexts) to think more creatively and propose more creative solutions, whilst Innov8 and Mind Share games provide a game-like experience in

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which players test the effects different options can have and find the proper options. Learning, although I cannot quantify, seems to occur in all the cases, but in very different aspects of human’s development:

In the first two, ideas flow from the players in ways no one can fully predict. The content and value is created through the people playing the game and in the form of flows of ideas and potentially insightful and transformative conversations in Venture Tower; and in Spark, as internal imaginative conversations that ultimately become conversations with the other participants. Learning is more a process of social learning – understanding others differently and learning from them, but can be as serious and impactful in the real life as any other type of learning (e.g. during playing Venture Tower one might come to understand his way of relating to partners from real life in a different way and change his behavior because of that).

In the latter two games, the players search to find predefined solutions. The games are used as carrier of already known facts.

How do these work in the context of innovation?

Innovation as a process doesn’t have a specific formula, so one cannot transmit that formula through a game. Transmitting models of innovation or the concept itself through a game also seems a not useful pursuit. Learning as occurred in the Venture Tower and Spark games, an open ended learning coming from within players’ interaction with each other and with the elements of the game, seems more helpful for our purpose. Thus further investigation goes in this direction; I will also focus on physical (board) games as they offer means for people to directly interact, face to face, which I see more valuable than interacting through computers interfaces or alike.

4. Understanding

the value of Board Games through Play

4.a. Why doing the test and why

like this

I set out to get deeper insights into how different board game characteristics (elements, physical form, mechanics, logic, story behind) influence gameplay, make the interaction engaging and especially how and what kind of learning experience is built. Thus I organized a first game playing session. Accounts of these and my reflections on them are presented further.

I stayed within few guidelines when choosing the games. It had to: • be physical, engaging the players in a shared physical place • have a social element – more people having to interact • combine collaboration with competition • use different types of game mechanics

I ended up choosing games that are not found in shops, thus not really known or popular, but are built for more functional reasons: Circle of Trust and Roll.On - both built in our study program, and Silent Game of John Habraken (Iversen & Buur, 2002).

For considerations of space I chose not to include the reflection on the Silent Game.

As well most of the game design analysis is not included, but key elements will be brought later at the end of next chapter. (more from the initial analysis can be found in Addendum)

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Understanding games better

4.c. Circle of Trust

Narrative/Gameplay: a meeting of several investors and a

project manager, where a project manager proposes a project to implement. For successfully delivering the project he shall need resources, often needing a contribution from investors, thus need to agree with them on what resources they invest, if they want to, and what will be their return on investment – the project manager can split 6 points among the investors and himself. All players have resources and each project needs a few of them; all of these are assigned randomly. Each player takes the turn to be project manager.

Game Mechanics: Negotiation; Hand management; Randomness.

Figure 2-6.Invitation to game playing (part of flyer)

4.b. Setting up I had organized a workshop-like setting, asking a few students, graduates or teachers from Southern University of Denmark in Sonderborg to join me in playing some games.

Seven people joined, having different cultural backgrounds (Denmark, Lithuania, Romania, Brazil, Germany), different professional status (students, teacher) and professional backgrounds (engineering, design, innovation and business, business management).

Figure 2-7.Circle of Trust, game start

Physical pieces, Abstract ideas The game narrative brings a real life-like scenario – managing a multi-stakeholder project-, slightly abstracted but easily relatable to a range of similar scenarios of negotiating.

The physical elements are slightly abstract, but have some suggested meanings attached, e.g. colored rings are different resources, walls are how one can protect his secrets, vertical rod – a project investment tower.

I trust you so you can trust me First project round – Sarunas loses investment Nils was the first project manager. He discussed with the

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other players to try to get them invest in the project and got to some agreements, some more clear some more vague.

Nils agreed with Sarunas too and at one point, when all seemed like already agreed upon, Sarunas took his resource rings and put them on the project tower. He invested all his resources (three resource rings), then was looking to Nils, waiting for the others to make their investments too.

Nils came back to Thijs - the investor he thought he had a lead with – but soon realized the offer Thjis made initially was harsh. He tried bargaining to get another offer, but in vain. No other investor wanted (or had the proper resources) to invest. Everyone had a smirk on their face, understanding the situation Nils was put in: he had to either accept Thijs’s tough offer or cancel the project, which would crash Sarunas’ investment. Thijs put it simple at one point – “(either) screw him or screw yourself”. Nils canceled the project.

Before new round started, each player got a new resource.

Sarunas: at least I will have one…

Nils, turning to him, smiling and acting in a playful teasing way: I’m really sorry…

Second round – Sarunas as project manager Coincidence or not, Sarunas’s body position throughout most of the second round seems to point towards excluding Nils to focus more on the others. Nevertheless he doesn’t avoid setting an agreement with Nils.

Figure 2-8.Sarunas project manager

After negotiating with few players, he wraps up with a proposal and asks for confirmation. Nils, Vio and Bente agree.

Then a suspended moment – everyone was waiting for a move, all looking at Sarunas. Sarunas took his (only) resource ring and put it on the investment tower.

Immediately when he grabbed the ring moving it towards the tower, the others followed.

Figure 2-9.I'm sorry.. (left to right: Nils, Sarunas)

Sarunas: ya, screw you Nils: (continues) …hopefully you will not hate me now…

Sarunas (laughing): I’m going to ignore you Nils (smiling back): right… you can do that.

Everything happened on a playful tone, people were mostly smiling, nevertheless there’s a stake in the discussion for few of them, and a pretty serious one considering their winning intentions.

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I think after the first round when Sarunas had invested fast his resources and ended up losing them due to an unclear (let’s call it) partnership management of Nils, the investors now were bound to be a lot more cautious. It is even more interesting to try understanding Sarunas’ position: he had just gone through deceit, losing his investment because he trusted and invested fast, and now he was put in the situation of having to take the first step and invest his (only) resource

Understanding games better

to inspire trust so that the others would follow too. Seems even though you distrust, you still have to demonstrate trust to inspire the others to trust you.

Players’ reflections at the end Bente: I noticed after you got screwed (looking at Sarunas) people behaved better

4.d. Roll.On Game

Narrative/Gameplay: three players balance a round board

with two fingers each, in order to score points by placing some colored spheres into their proper spots. There is neither a suggested narrative nor suggested meaning of the actions embedded.

What they considered they could learn out of it?

I: would you change your strategy?

Sarunas: yes I would. I wouldn’t trust so much from the beginning.

Players considered they exercised how to negotiate, understanding how people think and how your actions or talks influence others (Vio). Other point was: “you have to do something to get rewards, if you just screw others’ projects then nobody gets anything out of it; you have to contribute somehow…”(Sarunas).

I add they essentially exercised human to human interactions, making partnerships, settling or not agreements, playing with and influencing each other’s intentions.

Figure 2-10.Roll.On game

Game Mechanics: Balancing; Negotiation/Communication – making alliances on the spot.

Collaboration or Competition?

An interesting dynamic is brought by how you score. Say in between me and my left-placed player I have a scoring area with yellow holes. If I want to score I shall have to somehow agree with my left placed player to use our balancing skill simultaneous in order to get a (or more) yellow ball(s) rolling into the yellow holes. But of course, that happens at the same time as the other player would normally try to follow his own interests.

The design puts players in a strong co-dependence, while they are still competing for winning most points.

How you play it is your option Group 1 made of Alex, Thijs and Vio and group 2 made of Bente, Nils and Sarunas had very different scores at the end. The individual scores in group 1 were: -1, 1, 0, whilst in the group 2: 6, 5, 7; the maximum possible score was 8.

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For me that was directly linked to the very different approaches to play the players took within the groups: group 1 was very competitive and players seemed to take a very individualistic approach to playing whilst in the group 2 they seemed to have made it into a cooperation game.

One reflection in group 2: Nils: I actually think we should work more like… in a team.

We could achieve more points like that…

Bente: I think we’re also somehow overreacting, and it’s getting more instability in the board.

When all were brought together at the end and were reflecting on what happened in their play, group 1’s members were confused when group 2 shared their scores: Thijs (group 1): ha?

Alex (group 1): I think we played it differently…

Bente (group 2): how come?

Alex (group 1): well, for us the goal wasn’t to put the balls in the right position…

Thijs (group 1): ya, the goal became to put the balls in the opponent’s pit (which as the rules went resulted in -1 point for the opponent) (all laughing)

Which approach was better? Judging by scores you’d say group 2’s cooperative way, judging by engagement in play you’d say group 1’s way.

Important is that the game has to allow very different approaches and attitudes on how to play it.

Physical pieces, Abstract ideas The game engages one in coordination/competition with the other two players. The game elements are abstract; elements can be assigned a meaning according to players’ wishes, but (as it actually happened) in the absence of a layer of meaning the game is mostly about skillfully handling the board and that doesn’t provide prolonged learning for young adults, thus I anticipate a low replay value of the game.

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5. What

am I after?

Analyzing the play of these games brought both insights and challenges in my thoughts, as I follow some of them below.

5.a. Learning in games I came to think that you learn anyway by playing any kind of game, be it the ones you play just for fun or the more serious ones. The games that involve full body experience – like different types of sports– are also a way of learning a bunch of things. It’s just that this learning is different than the learning we are used to get in schools (consciously appropriating information someone gives us).

As adults it seems we came to downgrade playfulness, as also Brown & Vaughan and Sproedt signaled (Brown & Vaughan, 2009; Sproedt, 2012). We expect seriousness from each other and dub playful states as something proper at lower ages. I think we made a strong link between seriousness and predictability – serious people means more predictable people, and since we prefer being in control of situations, we came to praise more seriousness.

Let’s come back to games and take a football game as example. At a very basic level it exercises body’s motoric skills. Taken at a cognitive level, it forces our brains to take decisions fast, on the spot, in the midst of action while being assaulted by tons of external information e.g.: seeing one opponent player running (in a specific way) from your right side to tackle

Understanding games better

you, another one coming from the front, searching visually for your colleagues on the field and spotting a free one inviting you to pass to him. This is simplified phase a player might find himself during a match. Even in this simplified version, it’s simple to understand how such situations force the body to analyze fast the external environment, decide on partial intentions and courses of action, correlate intentions with body’s movements. At a social level, it goes towards building strong understanding of each other’s abilities and attitudes, towards building trust as a base layer for actually being able to play together (e.g. passing includes a certain level of trust on the other’s ability to continue the effort one started). Of course all layers are interwoven-body, cognition and social. The game includes collaboration and competition in its basic forms: collaborate with your team members to compete against the opposite team.

Then it seems this is ultimately a learning game, highly sophisticated in terms of what it involves, how it exercises all three layers of body, cognition and social, and yet very simple in rules. It’s obviously not a new game and it is a very popular one, though we don’t seem to regard it in terms of its learning value but only in terms of the fun it brings.

There must be more to why we, humans, look mostly at the fun value of games.

And why I came to understand fun and learning as two different things? I will come back to this later on, while I explore further what is the value of built for fun board games for our purpose.

5.b. Innovation learning By now it seems clear to me that games can be used purposefully for growing one’s abilities, thus a proper game should be usable to grow one’s innovating-related abilities.

It comes down to identifying or creating a proper game – easy. Due to time constraints and the existence of a sea of games on the market already, I decided to not focus on developing a new game but rather focus on finding a proper game; though my interest leaned more towards designing one.

5.c. Focusing the concept of innovation - why

innovation as creativity is not enough

I feel a need to focus my attention on a smaller range of abilities so the desired game would exercise and develop them more.

From the categories of abilities I pointed (Serban, 2013), open minded – “the innovator is able to create, bridge ideas and cope with risks and change“– has much to do with creativity.

Denning & Dunham (2010) argued much for dismounting the myth of creativity as the main source of innovation, as I showed in the previous chapter, and proposed more focus to be put on the adoption process which is essentially based on human, conversational interactions.

Makes it happen is about getting ideas and intentions to reality, having “the drive and persistence to initiate and follow through until things happen” (Serban, 2013). This is something that a game normally exercises in a player, as the player will follow through different challenges and learn to take different approaches during a game in order to make things happen –in order to win (McGonigal, 2010, 2011). If the game doesn’t start that kind of drive in players, we people normally call it a bad game, as the players won’t engage into it too much or they will get bored very fast.

Knows and understands refers both to existing knowledge the innovator has, and more than that to an attitude of being open and keen to learning (fast). Denning & Dunham (2010) argued in this sense that alongside social interaction and opportunities, domain expertise is an important factor

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for successful innovators - the “more you know about deep concerns and subtleties (in your community of practice), (…) more likely to offer high-value proposals that fit your community”. This makes a lot of sense, but it’s not something that a game should train. On the other hand, the attitude towards learning (fast) is something observed over and over again in games, as players learn from their engagements in the game in order to choose better routes/approaches and do it more effectively/efficiently to ultimately reach their goal (de Freitas & Liarokapis, 2011; McGonigal, 2011).

Connects with people –is about being able to work with others and “participate in human interactions and conversations in qualitative ways which allow influencing himself, the others, the ideas and practices at stake” (Serban, 2013).

So it comes down to what main stance I take on innovation – innovation based in creativity or based in human interactions? Creativity alone is not enough as shown thoroughly

by Denning et al. and Fonseca (Denning et al., 2010; Fonseca, 2002), as well as just engaging in human interactions does not ensure innovations to emerge. Seen through a complex responsive processes lens (Stacey, 2007), creativity or creative ideas, is something that emerges also in essentially conversational processes either between persons or within one’s mind taken as internal conversation (Mead, 1934).

Thus I come to adopt more the understanding that innovation emerges and develops through essentially conversational, human processes of relating. And as such the focus game-wise should be in what I mentioned earlier as developing abilities to “participate in human interactions and conversations in qualitative ways which allow influencing himself, the others, the ideas and practices at stake”.

In the same direction, Bogers and Larsen (2012) complete Fonseca’s view arguing that “the emergence of new patterns of interaction or conversation can eventually lead to innovation, which consequently can be seen as a new patterning of our experiences of being together”. Buur and Larsen (2010) argue for innovation understood as emergence of new meaning that happens in often conflictual conversations

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and point to a few qualities of conversations that might lead to innovation – I will come back to them later.

5.d. Game design To this point I had already experienced and learned about different goal and game mechanics and ways of structuring the game experience, but I will present some of these in the end of next chapter in which I continue analyzing other game designs. Few keywords for now are: collaboration and competition, concrete narrative and meanings but loose enough to allow improvisation and appropriation.

Training Innovators

Key takeaways Serious games should be understood in a broader sense including serious physical/ board games since they provide serious learning, rather than seen as computer /video-based serious games.

For training essential abilities to increase a person’s innovating potential, one should focus to develop person’s core abilities of interacting with people “in qualitative ways, which allow influencing himself, the others, the ideas and practices at stake”.

Training innovators should not be seen as transmitting existing know-how as that would assume there is _a_ way of doing innovation, but as more open-ended, exploratory and self-driven learning processes based on the above mentioned abilities.

Good games – by its good character – will train the players’ drive and persistence to make things happen and the abilities to learn (fast) and adapt to unpredictable environments – characteristics I pointed are needed for innovators.

Good games for our purpose should elicit or provide enough invitations to such qualitative human interactions. Game provides a perceived safe space where self can evolve in the interaction with others.

References Abt, C. C. (1970). Serious games: The art and science of games that simulate life. New Yorks Viking.

Bogers, M., & Larsen, H. (2012). The role of improvisation in processes of innovation. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the Participatory Innovation Conference, Jauary.

Brown, S. L., & Vaughan, C. C. (2009). Play: How it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul: Avery Publishing Group.

Buur, J., & Larsen, H. (2010). The quality of conversations in participatory innovation. CoDesign, 6(3), 121-138. doi: 10.1080/15710882.2010.533185 CISCO. (2009a). The Cisco Mind Share Game. Retrieved May, 2013, from https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/ docs/DOC-3820 CISCO. (2009b). screenshot Cisco Mind Share Game. https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/servlet/JiveServlet/ showImage/102-3820-54-1995/Mind+Share+Switch+Behavior.JPG. de Freitas, S., & Liarokapis, F. (2011). Serious Games: A New Paradigm for Education?. In Serious Games and Edutainment Applications (pp. 9-23): Springer.

Denning, P., Dunham, R., & Brown, J. S. (2010). The Innovator’s Way: Essential Practices for Successful Innovation: Mit Pr. Djaouti, D., Alvarez, J., & Jessel, J.-P. (2011). Classifying serious games: the G/P/S model. Handbook of Research on Improving Learning and Motivation Through Educational Games: Multidisciplinary Approaches,

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1, 118-136.

Fonseca, J. (2002). Complexity and innovation in organizations (Vol. null).

Groskovs, S. (2011). Design Talks Business: The Venture Tower Game. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the SIDeR ‘11 Conference Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark.

Iversen, O. S., & Buur, J. (2002). Design is a game: Developing design competence in a game setting. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 7th Biennial Participatory Design Conference. http://itee.uq.edu.au/~pig/ docs/Designisagame.pdf Labs, L. (2013). Lumosity - brain games & brain training. Retrieved May, 2013, from http://www.lumosity. com/ Marczewski, A. (2013a). Differences in terms. What’s the difference between Gamification and Serious Games?: http://www.gamasutra.com/.

Marczewski, A. (2013b). What’s the difference between Gamification and Serious Games? [Web log post] Retrieved from http://marczewski.me.uk/2013/02/25/gamification-and-serious-games/ McGonigal, J. (Producer). (2010, 2013). Gaming can make a better world. [Filmed talk] Retrieved from http:// www.ted.com/talks/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html McGonigal, J. (2011). Reality is broken: Why games make us better and how they can change the world: Penguin books.

Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self and society from the standpoint of a social behaviorist. Chicago: University of Chicago.

Mitchell, R., & Buur, J. (2010). Tangible business model sketches to support participatory innovation. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 1st DESIRE Network Conference on Creativity and Innovation in Design, Aarhus, Denmark.

Philips. (2009). Playful innovation Retrieved May 10th, 2013, from http://www.design.philips.com/philips/ shared/assets/design_assets/pdf/nvbD/july2009/playful_innovation.pdf Serban, C. (2013). Building blocks of innovators. SPIRE. Unpublished manuscript, University of Southern Denmark. Sonderborg.

Sproedt, H. (2012). Play. Learn. Innovate.: Grasping the Social Dynamics of Participatory Innovation. Sonderborg, Denmark: Books on Demand.

Stacey, R. D. (2007). Strategic management and organisational dynamics: the challenge of complexity to ways of thinking about organisations: Prentice Hall.

Susi, T., Johannesson, M., & Backlund, P. (2007). Serious games: An overview.

Van Eck, R. (2006). Digital game-based learning: It’s not just the digital natives who are restless. EDUCAUSE review, 41(2), 16.

Wikipedia. (2007). Serious game. Retrieved May, 2013, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serious_game Wikipedia. (2013). Gamification. Retrieved May, 2013 Zyda, M. (2005). From visual simulation to virtual reality to games. Computer, 38(9), 25-32.

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Training Innovators

Playing games for the fun of it

1. Introduction As pointed in the previous chapter, I will explore further what is the value of built for fun board games for our purpose. That is because my thinking moved towards seeing some kind of learning in any game-play activity, and thus am trying to understand whether and how fun and learning are related, as well as what design elements make them as such.

Based on some previous reflections and observations, I chose to explore these two games: Settlers of Catan and Bohnanza, games existing on the market for good years already.

2. Settlers

of Catan

Figure 3-1.Settlers of Catan, board view ("THE SETTLERS OF CATAN," 2013)

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2.a. Game design

Coopetition

Skills: Clever trading, strategy, tactical skill, luck (“The Set-

I consider it very engaging and I can say the other players were very engaged as well.

tlers of Catan,” 2013)

Narrative/Gameplay: In Settlers of Catan, players try to be the dominant force on the island of Catan by building settlements, cities, and roads. On each turn dice are rolled to determine what resources the island produces. Players collect these resources to build up their civilizations to get to 10 victory points and win the game.(“The Settlers of Catan - BoardGameGeek,” 2013). The game board representing the island is composed of hexagonal tiles of different land types which are laid out randomly at the beginning of each game. (“The Settlers of Catan-Wikipedia,” 2013)

Physical pieces, Abstract ideas

Figure 3-2.Settlers of Catan, game pieces

The logical link between the game’s physical elements and the narrative is strong – the elements are built as to suggest the element they depict in the game story.

2.b. Playing Settlers of Catan I played together with other three IT Product Design colleagues on a Friday evening. The other three players except me were: Pam, Clara, Kim; Clara and Kim have played it before. (The names are fake, in case you wonder, because players preffered to remain anonymous).

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Looking back, I think what makes it engaging is the direct competition that you’re in with the other players while you’re most times dependent on them too. You try to find ways to become better than the others and sometimes work against them while you still need to maintain good relationships with them to be able to advance. Each player does so in the same time, thus one needs to be connected to the game each moment to be able to make use of situations and take best decisions on the spot.

Negotiations – trying out tactics [01]. I: Who has Wood (resource)?

[02]. Clara: I do…but… what can you give me [03]. I: Ore, I could give you Ore for it.

[04]. Clara doesn’t respond [05]. I: I want two Wood and I give you two Ore for it [06]. Clara: I have only one Wood and it’s valuable for me too… maybe you can give me two Ore for one Wood [07]. I: I’ll give you two Ore for one Wood and another resource that you choose yourself to give me [08]. Clara: no no… I said you should give me two Ore for one Wood [09]. I: And I said I’ll give you two Ore in exchange for that one Wood _and_ another resource that you choose yourself [10]. Clara acts like she doesn’t understand…

[11]. Clara: No, you don’t understand, I said you give me two I give you one [12]. I: I understood, you just play you like you didn’t. I just basically told you I won’t give you two for one. I’ll give you two for two…

Playing games for the fun of it

[13]. Clara smiles and takes a few seconds break [14]. Clara: Yeah… ok then… it won’t work, I’ll just give you one Wood for one Ore (says stretching the resource card towards me; deal closed)

Apparently simple, but in actually intricate dynamics emerge and different attitudes serve as tactics. Clara, as in that moment seemed to me, used silence or acted as she doesn’t understand what I am proposing ([10, 11]). And since I interpreted her response as an intention of just forcing my hand to give up to her proposal, I reacted by getting her acting to the surface ([9] and [12]). In that particular situation my response happened to benefit me, though one cannot say my approach was generally good or would work in a similar situation with another person (or even with same person).

The small written account from the game shows few abilities put to work. We can see the way intentions are surfaced ([13]), initial responses in [4] and further unveiling of intentions [5,6]. In the same time power positions are in play – [6] Clara asks for more than I offered, she can do that since she can choose whether to offer me or not what I was interested in and since I showed more interest in what she has than she showed in what I could offer; in a sense she is using the power she has to try and get more power. We are negotiating power positions while we are negotiating the exchange of resources, and this is an ongoing process that continues of course in the rest of the game, in smaller interactions we have.

Thus the official negotiation moment serves as a space where it is allowed (and expected) for power relations to be chal-

lenged. From a design point of view, this is an invitation thrown in through the game mechanic of trading and the interdependencies formed through the resources needed for different actions players want to make (e.g. for building a road one needs few different resources that often won’t have himself).

3. Bohnanza

Figure 3-3. Bohnanza, package and card view (BOHNANZA-RIO GRANDE GAMES, 2013)

3.a. Game design

Skills exercised: Active Listening & Communication,

Counting & Math, Logical & Critical Decision Making, Memorization & Pattern/Color Matching, Risk vs. Reward, Hand/Resource Management, Trading; (“Bohnanza-FatherGeek,” 2013)

Narrative/Gameplay: In this game you make Gold points for farming beans.

Bohnanza is a German-style card game of trading and politics. It is played with a deck of cards with comical illustrations of eleven different types of beans (of varying scarcities), which the players are trying to plant and sell in order to raise money.

The principal restriction is that players may only be farming two or three types of bean at once, but they obtain beans of all different types randomly from the deck, and so must engage

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in trading with the other players to be successful. (“Bohnanza-Wikipedia,” 2013)

3.b. Playing Bohnanza We played this in a social gathering, party-like, type of setting, with three other players who knew the game.

The focus It struck me remembering the play that I was very drawn into trying to figure out what to do next, what cards I need, how to get it from other players and give other cards to them and so on. Throughout the whole game players’ attention seem to be focused mostly on the cards and how to manage them, less on the interactions they had, and in reviewing the recording that was confirmed. Players exchanged glances or seemed to pay attention to one another mostly (or only) when trading.

I thought maybe that happened only (or mostly) with our group so out of curiosity I searched the internet for pictures with people playing Bohnanza and it seemed that was true for the others too.

Thus I came to think again that even though the game is

4. Deeper

into theories of Play

4.a. What is play?

In a review of Homo Ludens (Huizinga, 1949), Henrik Sproedt (2012) shows that Huizinga underlined play to have had a central role in the development of human culture while distinguishing between homo sapiens (man who thinks), homo fober (man who does), and homo ludens (man who plays). “Huizinga paradoxically describes play as being simultaneously liberty and invention, and fantasy and discipline”; he also provided a definition of play.

Roger Callois criticizes Huizinga’s definition of play in his work Les jeux et les hommes (1958) - published later on in English as Man, Play and Games in 1961 (Caillois, 2001) - but nevertheless his definition is similar to Huizinga’s.

Callois sees play as an activity with these qualities: 1. Free: in which playing is not obligatory; if it were, it would at once lose its attractive and joyous quality as diversion; 2. Separate: circumscribed within limits of space and time, defined and fixed in advance; 3. Uncertain: the course of which cannot be determined, nor the result attained beforehand, and some latitude for innovations being left to the player”s initiative;

Figure 3-4.Bohnanza, players focus is on the cards

engaging in itself, it should push for the focus to be on the interactions between players and not on the objects of play itself – the game elements. The elements are just means to engage players in meaningful interactions.

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4. Unproductive: creating neither goods, nor wealth, nor new elements of any kind; and, except for the exchange of property among the players, ending tn a situation identical to that prevailing at the beginning of the game; 5. Governed by rules: under conventions that suspend ordinary laws and for

Playing games for the fun of it

the moment establish new legislation, which alone counts; 6. Make-believe: accompanied by a special awareness of a second reality or of a free unreality, as against real life.(Caillois, 2001)

Thomas Henriks (2011) points that Callois’ special contribution is his attempt to bring material aspects, even money, into the definition of play, distinguishing play in this regard from ordinary life affairs by the fact it doesn’t lead to an increase in economic productivity rather it redistributes the existing resources between the player (e.g. a game of poker).

4.b. But why do we play?

Caillois thinks of play as activities, while Gadamer (Wahrheit und Methode?, 1960) was more interested in the nature of play, “the experience that transforms those who experience it”. He describes the interdependency of seriousness and non-seriousness in a paradoxical way, and Sproedt (2012) references him to point that “individuals engage in play because it is not serious, but related to what is serious in a way that enables to relax from seriousness”. This is a good starting point, but it doesn’t yet provide a good enough picture of why we play.

In the book The ambiguity of play, Brian Sutton-Smith in a pursue to develop a general theory of play sees it “as adaptive variability - a struggle for survival with a biological and a psychological dimension: Biological: reinforce the organisms’ variability - from the actual to the possible -

in the face of rigidifications of successful adaptation Psychological: virtual simulation characterized by staged contingencies of variation, with opportunities for control engendered by either mastery or further chaos” as referenced by Sproedt (2012 )

In the same line, Sproedt (2012) references Brown and Vaughan (2009) saying that “play prepares the players to cope with the unique and ambiguous challenges in an evolving environment of an unpredictable world.”

Play is an ability of simulating life to learn from these without being directly at risk, it allows to create imaginative new cognitive combinations and find out what works (Brown & Vaughan, 2009). Brown backs up his contributions with findings from neuroscience, to claim that: “play is among nature’s most advanced methods to allow a complex brain to create itself, because it promotes the creation of new neural connections that did not exist before. This is not only valid for children but also for adults” as referenced by Sproedt (2012)

Another important point Brown and Vaughan underline is that we should look at play as a state of mind rather than an activity, as play depends on the experienced emotions.

On to the contribution of social play, Sproedt argues that: Social play is central to develop friendship, a feeling of belonging and the ability to cope with and thrive on creative tensions. Further, in this kind of play humans learn celebrating (motivation), storytelling (understanding), transformative and integrative play (innovation).

In my point of view, Noah Falstein (2005) goes deeper to the roots of play by taking an evolutionary approach to fun, play and games, linking these with the development of skills that humans needed for survival and reproduction – the basic drivers of all creatures – and the social skills needed for interacting with other humans. His point is that across evolution the human body has evolved to provide a sense of pleasure “when practicing and perfecting survival skills or learning new ones in a comparatively safe way that did not endanger his life to the same degree as the actual

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survival tasks”.

So he makes the case that entertainment in general, and play and games as subset of it, are about learning new things that give humans advantages in their survival and reproduction pursues.

“When people stop learning from a game, they stop playing it.

Multiplayer games can extend the learning process as players learn to top each other’s strategies and adapt, which helps explain their long-term play value.”

He recognizes four categories of fun, which he applies to games as well, based on the skills that are exercised in the activity: Physical, Social, Mental and Multipurpose fun (as a combination of the other three). He offers compelling examples where he decomposes fun into the learning aspects, here’s some of them (Falstein, 2005):

Then I wonder what kind of learning is triggered by an entertainment from the range of jokes? Trying to make sense of this through the lens just present-

Fun activity

Physical aspects

Social aspects

Mental aspects

Hunting

Using senses, weapons,

Cooperative hunting, dis-

Tracking, recognizing patterns in prey

tools, living off the land

Dancing Playing Grand Teft Auto (video game)

cussing or reading about

Gaining agility, stamina,

how to hunt Meeting others, showing

learning popular dance

off prowess, style, flirting

moves Learning to move, fight,

Dealing with game char-

drive

and

navigate

through the world

acters, discussing tactics,

behavior Choreography,

memorizing

best

moves, synchronizing to music Choosing and planning strategies, selecting routes

tips with friends

4.c. How I make sense of these Based on these works, my way of understanding play and its purpose has changed from a seemingly no purpose-driven activity (or maybe fun-driven activity) towards an activity in which humans purposefully engage in. It’s just that the purpose is so well embedded in our body design that we find it hard to see what the purpose actually is, but I agree with Falstein (2005) pointing to the core purpose as being learning skills that ultimately give advantages in the survival/reproduction pursuits. Regardless of whether we consciously see it, once engaged in a playful activity, at unconscious levels our body recognizes the utility or non-utility of that activity and provides (or not) signals of pleasure to endorse (or not) its continuation.

If we take for example hunting, few people associate hunting

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with playing. Though if we take the definition of Callois on play, we’ll fast figure out that it fits most of the qualities of play. And I think their definition captures properly enough what play means, but it so happens that it captures many more activities that fit under the general umbrella of entertainment, exactly for the reasons mentioned above related to learning of often unconsciously valuable skills.

ed, it’s important to note that normally once a person heard a joke and it was fun, the fun value of the joke decreases at a second, third and so on hearing.

Since the fun value is very condensed in the first few moments of the joke, I assume learning is the same. The fun comes rather from unpredicted situations or turns of events presented, so I think learning is related to the capacity of envisioning these unusual situations and turns of events; which means both developing an understanding of those things and connections as existing and at a deeper level, being able to step into that picture thus evolving the ‘me’ – “the

Playing games for the fun of it

organized set of attitudes of others which one himself assumes” (Mead, 1934).

Fundamentally, play seems to be one of the most advanced ways our body and brain learn and develop through simulations of possible realities that give safer environments or easier ways to learn than if those realities were to be actually lived. And since the learning happens at often unconscious levels, the body signals usefulness or non-usefulness of the activities through giving or not giving a sense of pleasure – or what we normally call fun, enjoyment.

Is play only about happiness or positive feelings? Surely not. Sproedt (2012) also points out that “play can be cruel, dangerous and full of effort and play can be hard work as well as work can be perceived as play”. Brown and Vaughan (2009) put it as “the opposite of play is not work, but depression”.

5. Reflections

on Game Design

5.a. Serious games. Fun games In this and previous chapter I analyzed games from both categories. That helped me understand different game mechanics, elements and qualities they bring, as presented in the following rows. Depending on players’ motivation, they will engage in either the serious or the built for fun games. I suggest games for training innovators to be built as apparently just for fun games, so players choose them for the fun of it and adding that up with the motivation of increasing their innovation potential will result in high engagement in the game play.

5.b. Narrative is important to engage users in gameplay; the story has to be compelling and all game elements/pieces being strongly linked with the story both at a logical level and at a physical design level in order to allow players to more easily create the ‘game reality’ in their mind and assume roles in it; as such, the more immersed they are in the story, the easier for the rest of the gameplay to take place.

5.c. Concrete enough, yet loose enough – though the game story (and other qualities of the design, as e.g. shapes) suggests the bridge between the game pieces and what they represent in the reality of the story, the people are the ones who eventually assign meanings to them. The suggested meaning has to be concrete enough for the player to fast incorporate it into their game reality, but open enough as to invite for player to assign his own other (than assumed by designer) meaning to it (Beuthel & Buur, 2013). Through that a stronger player-element connection is built, it enhances the play and thus potentially enhances learning. This is a simplified design view, while I acknowledge that meaning is not a given ‘thing’ one simply associates to stuff, but is a social construction, created as patterning of thinking within one’s mind.

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5.d. Game mechanics:

Negotiation – as a mean for players to achieve their pur-

poses in the game is a very engaging mechanic because it pushes for interacting with other players; the dynamics between the players cannot be (totally) anticipated and as such it allows for players to scale up the complexity of the game throughout their interactions. Players need to have ‘stuff’ to negotiate about, stuff that either has a meaning and value attached (or better said, suggested), or stuff they can assign meaning/value to and thus improvise around it as to make negotiations more complex and explorative than for example, I give you one apple, you give me one pear.

Trading resources one needs in the game is a concrete mechanic employed to invite for negotiation.

Elements of chance (manufactured unpredictability) in-

troduced in the game changes the dynamics in ways which players cannot foresee and it challenges existing patterns of relating, including the power relations established at that point. As such it encourages all participants to engage in the task the game presents – the weaker perceives the environment as safer because he can get advantages through chance, the stronger continuously tries to get better at handling the other factors he can influence in the game as to nevertheless win. Also this element of chance has to be balanced – too much chance won’t make the game more engaging as it would inhibit gameplay while players will feel they cannot influence the fate of the game.

Different randomizing mechanics can be employed – e.g. shuffling cards, dices, extracting pieces blindly.

Hand management, as giving player some assets and putting him in charge of how he uses them, builds strong engagement in the game as the gamer takes ownership of his assets; it also pushes for strategic thinking, which in a game context always has to be fast to be able to react in the moment.

6. Key

6.a. Play Play can be seen as an essentially learning-driven activity that give humans advantages in the survival/reproduction pursuits; in play, learning happens below our awareness radar disguised as fun, but play is only as fun as it provides serious learning in a safer/easier way than if one would acquire same learning from real-life situations.

As such seriousness and fun are paradoxically two faces of the same coin of learning.

6.b. Game design Three particular game mechanics seem interesting for our innovation context: negotiation, through maybe trading resources; elements of chance – because they invite/push players to interact in intricate ways, deal in and with uncertainty, and have a perceived safer space for all players; hand management – to build stronger engagement and push for fast strategic thinking.

The game narrative has to integrate properly all game elements; it has to be concrete enough as players to jump into its proposed realities and roles fast, while loose enough to allow for players to associate their own meanings to it, thus creating stronger connections which will allow for more immersed gameplay.

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takeaways

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References Beuthel, M. R., & Buur, J. (2013). Why a Train Set Helps Participants Co-Construct Meaning in Business Model Innovation.

Bohnanza-FatherGeek. (2013). FatherGeek.com. Retrieved from www.fathergeek.com/bohnanza/ Bohnanza-Rio Grande Games. (2013). Rio Grande Games. Retrieved from http://riograndegames.com/ Game/36-Bohnanza Bohnanza-Wikipedia. (2013). Wikipedia.org. Retrieved from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohnanza Brown, S. L., & Vaughan, C. C. (2009). Play: How it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul: Avery Publishing Group.

Falstein, N. (2005). Understanding fun–the theory of natural funativity. In “Introduction to game development”, ed. Steve Rabin, (pp. 71-98), Boston: Charles River Media.

Caillois, R. (2001). Man, play, and games: University of Illinois Press.

Henricks, T. S. (2011). Caillois’s Man, Play, and Games.

Huizinga, J. (1949). Homo ludens: A study of the play element in culture (Vol. 3): Taylor & Francis.

Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self and society from the standpoint of a social behaviorist. Chicago: University of Chicago.

The Settlers of Catan. (2013). Retrieved from www.catan.com/game/settlers-catan The Settlers of Catan-Wikipedia. (2013). Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Settlers_of_Catan The Settlers of Catan - BoardGameGeek. (2013). Board Game Geek. Retrieved from www.boardgamegeek. com/boardgame/13/the-settlers-of-catan Sproedt, H. (2012). Play. Learn. Innovate. Sønderborg: BoD.

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Angel Investors.

Story of a new game

1. Emergence,

evolution

1.a. A rational, goal-driven path to design Though I had just agreed with my supervisor that investing time and energy at this phase of the thesis into developing a new game would be a too tricky lead and a too big ambition for such short time, I just happened to wake up one morning having dreamt a game that we were playing (really!).

I had to write down what I remembered of the game mechanics and rules, with the initial intention of just getting it out of my head. From there on, I felt there’s potential thus felt the need to develop it more and see how it works in reality.

Figure 4-1.Then a miracle occurs

The game went through two design iteration and several tests before coming to the last presented version. It has many elements from a game I tested before - Circle of Trust: the base mechanic is trading and (for now) uses with same type of resources – rings in 4 colors- and the walls where investors can keep their secrets. But it differed (in the first version) by the fact it moved the players’ focus from the common project ran by one project manager at a time - specific to Circle of Trust - to individual projects each player was running both as project manager and investor in the same time; and in the last version, in order to force for more collaboration, investors have both a Big

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common Project and an individual Small Project. These, together with some rules and meanings associated have changed the game play drastically. Full game description and rules in Appendum (Appendum III and IV).

For space consideration, though, I will only share the reflections from the last version’s playing.

2. Experience

from playing it

Four students participated: Jerry, Patricia, Stefan, Sarunas.

The first game play finished in around 20 minutes. Participants wanted to play it again and invited me to play too – this time it took 50 minutes.

Apart from my already presented intentions – exploring to what extent and, if so, how the game is conducive to developing players’ abilities to engage in interactions and conversations in qualitative ways which allow influencing oneself, the others, the ideas and practices at stake, I wanted to also test an element I introduced aimed to enhance learning.

2.a. Pushing boundaries, testing approaches

laugh) Jerry: one stick plus one colored ring you choose from me. (waiting for response)

Investing in the big project At the end of the first game, Stefan was reflecting: I somehow started by focusing to finish my own project, I didn’t really consider the big project. Then after my turn went, I saw you guys investing in the big project and I was like: ‘nooo… I wanna invest in the big project too’

I’ve seen different ways of players learning from each other’s play, thus their interactions influencing them visibly. Some were more obvious (as the above examples), copying another’s play approach to test its value, some more subtle, as taking more risk because others took it.

The point is a player cannot ignore what the others do in the game; the value in the game is created through the players’ interaction. A self-sufficient approach to

Boundaries are given, existing facts? I suggest seeing boundaries in a game play more as images of boundaries that one creates in his mind, images that evolve in the interactions the players have.

Recognizing each other’s approaches, mirroring Trading money for a resource – there had to be a first While before that point players were trading only resources, Sarunas initiates an offer to buy a resource for money (points). Other players rush to make the transaction, he closes two deals changing two points for two rings (of which one was blue). Immediately after, Jerry’s turn follows (ref. “Figure 4-2.”): Jerry: maybe someone can give me a blue? …for a stick (money)?

Sarunas: I give you a blue for two sticks. (everyone bursts into

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Figure 4-2.Jerry trying to trade 1$ (stick) for a blue ring

play would render one loser, so in that sense the game design through its goal mechanic pushes a player (assuming one wants to win at least sometimes) to engage actively with the others.

In order to engage with another player, let’s call him B, one needs to relate to B in ways which B recognizes (or are meaningful), so one needs to assume

Angel Investors. Story of a new game

the attitude of B (Mead, 1934) and build it ongoing as to be able to relate to him while B Player changes too through engaging with the other players.

So fundamentally, this builds up the ability to relate to another in meaningful ways. Is it long-term learning? Does it happen only in a game? I can only assume that is long term learning, because in the real life outside the game you engage with others in different interactions anyway and you will unconsciously bring this ability to work. You learn how to act better in a situation within

a game, but since you build an ability, that will be translated in the real life too.

You cannot ignore you know how to act better.

2.b. Evolving gameplay – twists

in the objects of negotiation

Working with futures Stefan: anyone any know-how? (no) anyone willing to..

Sarunas: I don’t’ have one, but I will give it to you next round.

(4 minutes after, a different negotiation) Sarunas: you give me one technology and I can offer you know how on the contract, when I get one Stefan: ah, in the future you mean… once you get one…no.

Sarunas tries to introduce a new way of trading resources getting a payment for a good he ‘promises’ on a ‘contract’ to deliver later - similar to futures in the trading industry, although he doesn’t refer to it in that way.

What are the objects of our negotiation?

Stefan asks Sarunas for a yellow ring, Sarunas asks in return for more than one stick.

Stefan, on a serious tone: how ‘bout a white stick and a massage?

Stefan doesn’t get his offer through, so he turns to try negotiate with Patricia for the same ring. Patricia plays hard too and asks for much (“Figure 4-3.”).

Figure 4-3.One stick... aaand a cookie

Stefan, seriously: ok, ok… one stick. and a cookie. (waiting for a response)

The two accounts recalled show how some players go over the boundaries of the already existing patterns of playing.

They try different approaches to how to negotiate and transform other goods into goods to negotiate for. While these are ways of getting better positions in the game compared to other players, winning small advantages and ultimately money in front of them, they provide different learning points for all players engaged as it challenges their existing ways of playing and forces them to react (differently) if they want to maintain their position (which is actually impossible in reality) or win.

These are accounts of how perceived boundaries of the game and the patterns of playing evolve; and these happen through small continuous interactions between the players, in the uncertainty brought when some players act in ways which are recognized as different. New patterns of conversation and relating follow.

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2.c. Evolving relations, evolving attitudes Stefan tried in different ways to convince Patricia to trade with him and give him a technology resource. He doesn’t manage, Patricia bringing different reasons as for example ‘this is very valuable ‘cause there aren’t too many of them now’. Immediately after, her turn comes and she invests two technology resources in the big project.

Stefan: you had two technology… and you didn’t even….pff Patricia: I’m sorry… it’s business…. I’m… yeah….you know…

Figure 4-4.Stefan and Patricia after she invested the green ring

I made you an offer, you refused it

This sounds to me much like “hey, it’s a game, I can do that” – “no, no you shouldn’t”. Patricia broke the already set patterns of relating, and they come to negotiate what they should allow or expect from each other. The situation is under the umbrella of “playfulness, the game space allows it”, nevertheless it’s easy to imagine how Stefan might find himself in real life, in other situations with Patricia, drawing from this experience and asking himself something like “is it for real now? or maybe she’s playing with me now as she did in the game“. It’s fun in the game but it’s serious underneath. Why that?

The point is once a person steps in a game, he steps into the role of a player and acts as a player (whatever that might assume in that specific game), thus the person creates a character slightly abstracted from himself as he is in the real life, and that further allows him to play the game. That is part of the make-believe character of play we’ve seen in the existing definition(s) of play. Nevertheless this process still takes place within same person and inevitably he’ll find himself in the game drawing from his previous real life experiences and shaping the next version of ‘him’: his (inter) actions will be informed/shaped by his previous experiences while in the same time the (inter)actions shape himself and thus affect how he will act next. Though these will in-

40

form directly how to better act next in the game, these shape the person not just the fictional character the person made up in his mind. So if the situation is serious enough to provide learning opportunity, one will inevitably find himself changed, not just the player in the game. What Brown & Vaughan (2010) point out is that “real play is enjoyable in itself and done for its own sake. It overrides consciousness of any goal”. I argue in a good game that also means being so immersed in the play that you are not aware what is the difference between yourself and the fictional identity you created to represent you as player. And I believe that is when deeper learning happens, when and because own’s identity is not consciously separated from the fictional player.

3. Enhance

learning – reflection as part of the game

3.a. The starting questions Enhancing learning in the game for me took two directions expressed by following questions: • How to invite players to create (more) bridges between the learning from the game and their real life?

• How to make reflection engaging, such that players want and choose to do it?

The latter considers games are played because players choose to, not because an external asks them to (as it happens for example, with serious games brought in organizational settings by a trainer, within a workshop), and so reflection

Angel Investors. Story of a new game

should be also perceived as part of the game and engaging to do it, so that players choose themselves to do it.

Both questions have an underlying thinking that reflection on experience is conducive to learning, if done in a proper manner (Kolb, 1984). Schön (1987) also brings reflection into picture as source of learning and he sees it as happening at the same time with the experience itself, while Kolb presents reflection in a staged manner happening at the end of the experience. Kolb’s view provides a way to create the context for reflection to happen here – at the end of the game play.

you think you learned something out of it and tell the others how you can relate that to a real-life situation.

3.c. Did it work? “it was very hard in the beginning to measure what is more valuable, one of this, one of that, what mattered most; I think it’s very interesting to see how we negotiate based on our knowledge about the things we negotiate and the values we think they have;”(Patricia)

Yes, it worked, and considerations of what didn’t work or what could be done better are presented below.

But before that, one could also argue that it worked in this context because it was an artificially set context for play – as I had organized the meeting and asked people to join, the stage was filmed, etc. So there is a need of further testing an approach like this in a real game play setting, where the participants self-organize to play.

3.d. A different way of recognizing whether

learning occurs

Figure 4-5.Kolb's Experiential Learning Cycle

3.b. What I explored and How Linking the goal mechanic with the act of reflection, to integrate the reflection in the game and leverage players’ motivations of winning.

I told players at the end of the game that the next part is still part of the game and as such it might influence the end result.

I gave them each three sticks (money), asked them to reflect on their play, then share their reflection and at the end they would give the sticks to each other based on the quality of the reflection.

The question for reflection was framed as: take one situation from the game that

“if the game is smart and good enough, it should encourage you to do it (reflection). Maybe not right after but maybe later on, as you keep talking about it. But if it’s a game that you don’t really care, then you have fun and you forget about it five minutes after”(Patricia)

Taking into account also the previous thinking, of games being fun because they provide serious learning at often unconscious levels, Patricia’s comment gives me a useful insight: One could see if the gameplay triggers (long term) learning if the player voluntarily continues to reflect on the play (long) after the gameplay was officially over.

As learning is self-driven, it will depend on the player whether s/he finds interest in the subjects that can be learned from the play.

3.e. Towards better ways Reflection should be self-driven, not conditioned or imposed, but as with any design, the designer can try to create a context that invites or triggers reflection. Designer’s work

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is seen as creating invitations, much as Friis and Larsen (2006) show how through working with theater they create invitations for discussions, which then lead (or not) to change.

From a design perspective, the link between the mechanic – giving points – and the act of reflection was not strong enough: The players will tend to give the points not based on the reflection, as it was supposed to, but based on the existing situation in the game at that point, on how the relations were formed and more than that on how the score situation presents itself, as it gives players the opportunity to, just at the end of the game, change the whole score around.

So, though the act of giving points was supposed to act as incentive and make players more engaged into reflection while making it also a part of the game, it rather shifts the focus from the reflection and the quality of it to the established relations in the game and how one can influence the score with the points s/he can give.

A suggestion coming from players is to do this at the end of the game play, but the points given to the other players to be used in the beginning of the next play; then giving the points would not influence the current game anymore and thus people would be more interested to give them based on the actual reflections.

Another suggestion is to make the reflection a part of the game by calling it something else, giving it a different meaning: e.g. a company report meeting? I agree this will help in the sense that because players will act still from the roles they took within the game, they will perceive it more as integrated in the game, but consideration still needs to be given to the main issue above presented –giving points and its influence.

4. Game

Design considerations

4.a. Create a safe base In the Angel Investors, before starting the real game, each player has a Big Project and the first phase is for them to decide together which one common project they want to continue the game with.

Reflecting on how that went, I came to these conclusions: Apart from the normal setting-up period that happens at the beginning of games, providing an initial smaller challenge integrated with the main narrative provides a space and invitation (in a range from allowing up to pushing) for players to • make sense of the game and how to play it together: of its boundaries, its elements and factors, its possible routes to success, and negotiate its meanings; understanding what is important in the game; how challenging they want to play the game (if it allows for varying it); • get into the play mood

From a relational point of view, this seems very important because as players engage in the task and build the above mentioned base, they build an even more important base for playing – the relational aspect of their interaction – as initial intentions, attitudes and ways of playing one might take in the game start to surface, thus players start to accommodate with each other. It is also an ‘official’ space where power relations can come into play in a game setting.

This creates a good enough holding of relating to each other and trust as to be able to go into the main challenges the

Figure 4-6.Players deciding which Big Project to continue

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Angel Investors. Story of a new game

game presents; even if dis-trust appears, players have a base of knowing how to relate to each other which brings about a perceived safer play space.

4.b. Physical pieces, abstract

ideas

“Does anybody have any know-how?”

“Technology? Technology is the green, what do you offer?”

In both cases, the players were referring to the resource rings in the game. Players referred to the resource rings in both ways, using the suggested meaning– i.e. people, know-how, technology, customer insights – or their color quality, as the latter was the main quality distinguishing them.

“Stefan: since we’re in Quarter 4 and we’re approaching Christmas…(…)

Jerry: do you want a green one? A green one for Christmas? (all laugh) Stefan: is it a present?

Jerry: a present... (laughing)... ok...here.”

I pointed in last chapter that it’s important to allow strong connection player-game elements, through creating a compelling yet open enough story around them, suggesting meanings but leaving enough space for players to bring their own meanings.

In the current game case this means players associate different meanings to game elements (i.e. Q4, technology resource) and that allows for more intricate negotiations compared to the first version of the game (where the resource rings had no meaning associated). Players inevitably bring their own previous experienc-

es in this process, and since there is a possibility of easier connecting them with game elements, and thus with the experiences in the game, they can easier translate learning from the game to their real life.

It is also generally important to give enough space to evolve the game rules as the group decides, and to build it such that players can adapt the level of challenge.

4.c. Collaboration and Competition. Coopeti-

tion

“It’s actually ironic. If I had invested the yellow in the big project, then you would’ve won, now because I didn’t, I won.”

If the big project succeeded, it would have doubled the money investors got from it. Stefan reflects on that at the end of first game, though I am not sure to what extent he reflects on it from a perspective of “what a surprise” or from a the perspective of a rather intentional action he made and how it served his intention.

In another account, an apparent intention from a few players to finish the common Big Project soon became obvious not to be based in a desire for collaborating for the better of all players but rather collaborating so the Big Project is finished, their returns on the investments get doubled, and hopefully they win. So the motivation was still very individualistic again.

As far as the game play observed went, collaboration happened mostly as a need for individual winning and because players were interdependent (needing resources others had). Collaboration is still a need within the current game, but it becomes a mean to winning.

Collaboration in game then has to be seen in a paradoxical way linked to competition: you cannot compete to win without collaborating and you cannot collaborate without competing – since by collaborating you are affecting the power relations other players have.

This is an especially good quality to be kept in board games for developing innovators: innovation occurs in often complex and sometimes paradoxical situations, and board games can make use of this principle very well since people

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interact (face to face) in a shared space and so intentions of collaborating and competing can become immediately recognizable.

5. Final

thoughts from playing Angel Investors

Participants engage in play in rather spontaneous ways, play patterns itself as an ongoing improvisation, while some players improvise more, distinguishing their actions and approaches from previous existing approaches, and others less. I see spontaneity as Larsen (2005) presents it - “an activity of relating without being in control of the situation, meaning that one acts before being able to tell why”.

Spontaneity is perceived as risky, as it essentially assumes acting in the unknown, and as such some actions are perceived as riskier than others (Larsen, 2005). Nevertheless, the game provides the environment in which, as we can see, all players need to assume risks and some assume more.

Once one’s capacity of acting spontaneously and dealing with risks is built in the game play, we can safely assume it will be used in real life situations too.

Players exercise taking the attitude of the others, as each player’s approach changes rather often when they ongoing relate to each other. This, translated to reality, means being able to relate to the people one interacts with in ways which are meaningful to them. In the same time in playing, participants learn to challenge existing power relations and push the boundaries of perceived rules.

I saw and pointed towards how players were learning from each other (e.g. even copying whole behaviors to test its usefulness), how in an ongoing process of players’ relating to each other, their intentions get to the surface, how players constantly have to improvise and deal with the riskiness brought by it, how they explore and push the perceived boundaries of the game, of the play and of the tacitly negotiated social norms established within the group. In this play the relations between them inevitably evolve as they challenge assumed power relations and trust. These capabilities, as I argued before, are essential for increasing one’s

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chances to interact with people in ways which allow innovation to emerge and evolve.

Buur and Larsen (2010) pointed towards some qualities of conversations that may lead to innovation in the context of participatory innovation practices, and I believe these are valid for a more general context of innovation as well, as, for example, innovation in organizations: “(1) crossing intentions are allowed to surface; (2) new themes emerge in the interactions between crossing intentions; (3) new, vigorous concepts emerge that resonate with participants’ own experiences; (4) there is a spontaneity that allows participants to imaging new roles; (5) there is an ongoing discussion and readjustment of goals; and (6) facilitation is exercised within the circle of participation, rather than from ‘outside’.”

In the above reflections we’ve recognized already how the qualities one, two, four and five characterize player’s interactions. The sixth is also true since playing the game is a business between the players and it’s facilitated by them. The third quality, though in a very broad sense, we can recognize it in the examples where the gameplay evolved due to some new ways of playing – e.g. working with futures.

Reflection can be embedded as part of the game and few considerations were brought above referring how it could be done and what should be considered.

Finally, the game provided the safe space

Training Innovators

and invitations for the above, and as such facilitates that players learn from these in a playful manner. Safer than in real life, yet serious learning applicable directly in real life, that is a very good tradeoff.

Figure 4-7.Behind your wall

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Training Innovators

References Buur, J., & Larsen, H. (2010). The quality of conversations in participatory innovation. CoDesign, 6(3), 121-138. doi: 10.1080/15710882.2010.533185 Friis, P., & Larsen, H. (2006). Theatre, improvisation and social change. In P. Shaw & R. Stacey (Eds.), Experiencing Risk, Spontaneity and Improvisation in Organizational Change: Working Live (pp. 19): Taylor & Francis.

Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development (Vol. 1): Prentice-Hall Englewood Cliffs, NJ. Larsen, H. (2005). Spontaneity and power: theatre improvisation as processes of change in organizations. University of Hertfordshire.

Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self and society from the standpoint of a social behaviorist. Chicago: University of Chicago.

Schรถn, D. A. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner: Jossey-Bass San Francisco.

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Training Innovators

Method ref lection I worked at the intersection of two main paradigms– a rationalist, systemic thinking and a complex responsive processes thinking (Stacey, 2007).

Through the former I was able to move quickly enough through lots of information, categorize (e.g. game mechanics, actions), think and see things in steps.

Through the latter I was able to understand the experience and value brought through physical games in a deeper way than provided before, being able thus to connect their value to essential abilities innovators need, and explore how to use games for innovators’ development.

The work is presented according to my movement of thought, which is also strongly bounded to a time aspect. As such one can see throughout the present work my evolution in interests and understanding related to the topic and how the topic got more refined, as well the contributions that it brings. Of course, the work was streamlined at the end in order to increase readability, showing very few of the crossroads of thought and options I came across but I tried to maintain the chosen written accounts as they were portrayed when I wrote them or at least make them account for that specific point in time they were presented for.

A mix of the following methods was employed:

Incomplete narratives from my own experiences as basis for self-reflections – to move deeper into my sources of interests and my own understanding of different concepts;

Game playing – sessions (similar to workshops) – to provide for learning from the actual experiences, especially in the context of games which often engage people into complex dynamics;

Video analysis and conversation analysis in order to identify interesting passages in my play which then provided a base for self-reflection and linking with theory, to finally find elements that opened new paths in the process (e.g. understanding the val-

47

Training Innovators

ue of collaboration and competition through negotiation mechanics) or have demonstrated some assumptions I explored (e.g. that a game provides some type of learning);

Analysis of existing games designs through the lens of existing categories (e.g. types

of game mechanics, skills, etc. as suggested on a site I found very useful in my path boardgamegeek.com);

Designing a game - as way that allowed the learning previously acquired in the process to come to the surface and become also base for reflection and learning from it.

In the act of doing I thus used the conscious and embodied learning points and made (more) sense of some of them.

 

References Stacey, R. D. (2007). Strategic management and organisational dynamics: the challenge of complexity to ways of thinking about organisations: Prentice Hall.

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Conclusion Board games can be used successfully in increasing innovating potential of young people 1. Contribute Contributions are seen for the field of innovation education, both within formal education and in organizational contexts, and for game design for that purpose.

They go in two main directions: As new ways of understanding what value (board) games bring and how they can be used to train innovators, by focusing on the core needed abilities needed to increase (young) people’s innovation potential.

As game design guidelines and suggestions of research focus, in order to make board games that are conducive to developing those abilities; and a designed game – Angel Investors – as example and inspiration. A different way of understanding serious games is also brought.

I bring in a complex responsive processes thinking throughout my analysis and that allows me to understand and identify how core needed abilities for innovators are exercised within specific games. Players act in rather conflictual situations, often dealing with conflicts of interests; they ongoingly negotiate what trust and distrust mean, while playing at the boundaries of working with each other and working against each other. They (have to) act spontaneously and deal with the uncertainty brought by it.

Patterns of relating are often challenged and thus evolve while in that same time power relations are challenged and reconfigured. Players step in one another’s shoes (take the attitude of the other as Mead (1934) would describe it) to be able to relate to each other in ways which are recognized by the other (hopefully recognized as meaningful) and continuously adapt this image they have of the other, since each player’s attitudes and what ‘meaningful’ means evolves fast. These situations provide for serious learning in the game, developing abilities which then players will inevitably use in their real life as well. I showed also how these are part of qualitative conversations and interactions

49

Training Innovators

(Buur & Larsen, 2010) players have and further I identified what and how game qualities and elements invite (or push) for such interactions. The elements identified act as (partial) guidelines for designing board games for the purpose of training innovators.

Overall I see the contributions made as connecting dots between different theories and ways of making sense about play and learning for innovators. To the best of my knowledge, a novelty from my work comes from providing a complex responsive processes view on the qualities of board games for learning in the context of innovation.

I drew from Brown and Vaughan (2009) and especially from Falstein (2005) to understand the quality games bring to humans and why fun and seriousness are deeply interrelated in play. I further their theories through my games analysis by pointing out how this relation is played out - fun in, and because of serious situations - and how learning is essentially at their base.

Sproedt (2012) explores the social dynamics in participatory innovation and shows how they are essentially about knowledge transformation across boundaries. He explores play in this context and shows how a (serious) board game can become a tool to facilitate this knowledge transformation and a tool to grasp the social dynamics. I build from his work in the direction of using fun board games to increase innovation potential of young people and bring as well a designer perspective pointing out game design guidelines for this purpose. The elements suggested game elements are not new, what’s new is connecting them with the purpose of training innovators and showing how learning for that purpose is facilitated through them.

The following is a summary of the key points showed in the thesis.

50

2. Play,

games, fun

Good play is fun play and fun is the deeply embedded in our body to signal that useful learning occurs. Because it is deeply embedded in our body, we are often not aware of what we learn through that play, but fun is an evolutionary advancement our body. In play, fun and seriousness are interdependent and are just two faces of same coin, called learning.

Games provide the safe space and frame for some type of learning to take place while playing. Good games provide good fun, thus good learning.

The more replay value - that is how much players want to replay same game and is bounded to the ammounts of fun they had playing it-, the more learning can occur through the game play. Spontaneous reflection that, without being asked, players take long after game play has ended is a strong sign of prolonged learning and replay value.

The term serious games seems a pleonasm since a good game provides serious learning. I suggest then the term serious games to be used mostly for games which are used as platforms to teach existing knowledge; and of course, the term serious games should include serious physical/board games.

Conclusion

3. Innovation I came to see innovation somewhere in between on the one hand “new practice adopted by a community” (Denning, Dunham, & Brown, 2010) and on the other hand, a change in behaviors and change in the patterning of conversations of a significant number of people, as emergent and evolving in ongoing processes of relating between the people (Bogers & Larsen, 2012; Stacey, 2007).

In a game context, for training essential abilities that increase a person’s innovating potential one should focus to develop abilities to interact with people in qualitative ways, which allow influencing himself (innovator), the others, the ideas and practices at stake. In the previous chapters and especially at the end of chapter four, I pointed to how a board game exercises these abilities.

4. Self-directed

innovation learning

Ideally, playing a game for above purposes should not be imposed – i.e. as it happens in trainings where the trainer decides that participants have to play a specific game – but playing the game should be self-decided by players. In that sense focus for our purpose should be on creating board games that bring lots of fun (thus replay value) and thus players choose to play them for the fun reason, but in the same time they work with the aspects I underlined as needed for innovators.

Board games are also ideal because they don’t need what is usually called exter-

nal facilitators, but facilitation is an internal business between the players.

As such, since the games are a powerful tool, a way of using them, say in an organizational context, could be creating a ‘library’ of good games and a context in which people can choose themselves which game to play.

5. Board

game design

Mechanics that increase player’s interactions should be employed. They have to create a perceived safer context for interactions to take place and invite or push for them to happen.

In that sense linking player’s motivation to win in the game with a mechanic that allows them to win only if they interact with others, needing to collaborate somehow, is a strong element to be embedded. Players compete, but they have to collaborate for wining, thus play is on the edge between making good relations with others and playing against them. A good example of such mechanic is trading resources.

Introducing elements of chance is also beneficial – it, again, creates a perceived safer environment for the ‘weaker’ player, while at same time it provides an increased challenge, pushing players to try even more to master the rest of the elements in the game in order to win.

The game narrative has to be concrete enough to get players started fast, while abstract enough to allow them to assign their own meanings, create deeper connections and improvise.

The action of conscious reflection, as a promise for translating learning from the game to the reality, can be made part of the game, though it has to be very carefully incorporated in the narrative and use mechanics as to make it ‘fun’.

Game points can be such mechanic, but have to be used carefully as showed in the Angel Investors chapter. It’s a simplified view, but as mentioned before, designer’s role is to create invitations for players to reflect consciously.

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Training Innovators

6. Further

research

Further research should go first into assessing quantitatively the contribution I showed some specific games bring to developing innovation abilities, in order to identify what is the effect of these on the long term. For example, in groups of people playing games as those presented over a longer period of time, what is the incidence of players who have innovated something (in the real world, not in the game), compared to that from a similar group of non-players.

Secondly research should go into exploring what other types of games and qualities they present are conducive to innovation abilities. For example, I would suggest exploring the value of some role playing games and as well of more physically engaging games. But these still in the frame of self-facilitation – without needing external facilitators- as otherwise there are already a lot of games used as bases for trainings which need facilitation. The purpose is to provide a library of different types of games for our purpose, for two reasons: using different games to cover the spectrum of needed abilities at different levels and in different ways, and players having enough game options to choose from.

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Training Innovators

References Bogers, M., & Larsen, H. (2012). The role of improvisation in processes of innovation. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the Participatory Innovation Conference, Jauary.

Brown, S. L., & Vaughan, C. C. (2009). Play: How it shapes the brain, opens the imagination, and invigorates the soul: Avery Publishing Group.

Buur, J., & Larsen, H. (2010). The quality of conversations in participatory innovation. CoDesign, 6(3), 121-138. doi: 10.1080/15710882.2010.533185 Denning, P., Dunham, R., & Brown, J. S. (2010). The Innovator’s Way: Essential Practices for Successful Innovation: Mit Pr. Falstein, N. (2005). Understanding fun–the theory of natural funativity. In “Introduction to game development”, ed. Steve Rabin, (pp. 71-98), Boston: Charles River Media.

Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind, self and society from the standpoint of a social behaviorist. Chicago: University of Chicago.

Sproedt, H. (2012). Play. Learn. Innovate. Sønderborg: BoD. Stacey, R. D. (2007). Strategic management and organisational dynamics: the challenge of complexity to ways of thinking about organisations: Prentice Hall.

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Acknowledgment Put simply, my kind thoughts go‌

To my supervisor Henry Larsen, for guiding and supporting me without setting too many boundaries nor staying on my back; for giving inputs even while in holiday and for reminding me kindly about the deadlines.

To Robin van Oorschot and Frederik Gottlieb, two colleagues having Henry Lars-

en as supervisor too, for inputs in the common meetings or for simple talks we had across time which opened new ways of seeing my work and gave ways for moving further.

To the people that attended the game sessions I invited them to, hoping they found something useful in them or at least it challenged a bit their assumptions on innovators; and to those I played the fun games with though I didn’t announce I would use my playing experience for the thesis too. I will not give names here, but a BIG thank you goes to each of them :)

To each of my great colleagues who at any point shared with me some nice words or encouragement along my process.

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Addendum master thesis addendum

Training Innovators Using board games to increase young people’s potential to innovate

Contents: I.

Thesis Proposal

2

II.

Flyer / inviting to play 4

III.

Angel Investors - game rules

IV.

Angel Investors - projects 6

5

V.

Additional analysis of games tested 8

VI.

Paper “Building Blocks of Innovators”

Candidate: Claudiu

Serban

Submitted on May 21st, 2013

12

Supervisor: Henry

Larsen

TrainingInnovators.Addendum

I. Thesis Proposal Master thesis proposal ITPD

Claudiu Serban Dec. 2012

Training innovators Background The term ‘innovation' is (still) a buzzword in the business world, innovation being often seen as an important competitive advantage an organization can have to manage to keep or increase its market share. But (still) the meaning of ‘innovation’ is discussed intensely in books and papers as there are many different understandings of it and more especially of how it happens.

In the existing multiplicity of lights, the people behind innovation – let’s call them innovators – have different characteristics depending on the light used. If we take the perspective that the people are the main drivers of innovation, then it seems important to figure out how we could ‘create’ people with an increased capacity to innovate. To what extent is that possible? And if so, what could be the role of play and games in educating such people?

I will be building on previous research done by Sproedt Henrik (‘Play.Learn.Innovate’), exploring these directions at SPIRE. Research question To what extent can you train (young) people to become innovators or increase their innovating potential?

What can be the contribution of games to this?

What other methods or tools have impact, to what extent? What are the characteristics of such tools such that they have impact?

Academic field / audience Innovation-related educations (i.e. universities teaching innovation), scholars in the field of innovation. Professionals focused on developing innovative potential of organizations (i.e. consultants, trainers or coaches in this field). Game designers.

Investigative activities (literature) Identify characteristics of innovators; identify frameworks of evaluating these; (desk research & asking people) Identify existing tools / methods used to increase innovation potential; identify games which might increase innov. potential; (workshops & evaluations) Run workshops with a method/tool, same with one/two games, over a decided period of time (as to be sure the tool/game has impact). Evaluate participants’ innovative levels at beginning, between workshops and at some time after last workshop. (design) Based on the observations made up to that point – design or modify game made to increase innovative potential; test game.

2

Training Innovators. Addendum

Master thesis proposal ITPD

Claudiu Serban Dec. 2012

Documentation/data Literature review; plans; Narratives; Interviews with participants, evaluation forms, video/observation notes from workshops; Expected contributions A better understanding of what is the potential of games in developing innovating capacity of (young) people, what should games focus on for this purpose; in that sense it would contribute as design guidelines for game designers.

Relevant literature Sproedt, H. (2012). Play. Learn. Innovate.

Denning, P., & Dunham, R. (2010). The innovator’s way Fonseca, J. (2001). Complexity and innovation in organizations

3

TrainingInnovators.Addendum

II. Flyer / inviting to play

you want to become more innovative, right? let’s team up :) innovation

learning

game & play i think we can train to be more Innovative by Playing ( :

And i’m researching that in my thesis: to what extent can games be used for it, what kind of games and what characteristics generate more impact. Part of it will be designing a new one.

you’re probably wondering by now.... what’s my role?

we’ll explore/play together in a group a few games during a few* meetings; we’ll make the meets short and flexible enough.

is it worth my time?

it’ll be FUN & you’ll get useful insights into what makes you an innovator and how to get better at it next?

say YES, I WANT TO JOIN. first meeting will be on either 17th or 18th. everything will happen in the interval 17th April-3rd May. * few means that i keep it flexible for now, but you can expect to 3 meets.

Claudiu Serban IT Product Design student clauss.serban@gmail.com / 2392 6291

4

Training Innovators. Addendum

III. Angel Investors - game rules

Angel Investors You are angel investors placing your investments across a whole

people technology

As you’re a good investor, you want to get the most out of your businesses and at the end of the year you’ll win if you managed to get more than the other investors at the table. Simple :)

customer insights

Before the year has begun, you just started two new investment projects: • one that is big and very promising if it succeeds – this one you tors at the table, and…

• one you want to manage it by yourself.

The year is split in 4 Quarters, and each quarter you’ll be able to get more resources, trade and invest them. Pay attention to the quarters as some of them will bring you more resources and some won’t allow you to invest. Also pay attention which investments might bring you more money.

know-how

Small Project

you can only cash in at the end of the year 1$ for each resource invested properly get an extra +1$

*only one Big Project shall be chosen to start the game with; if the agreement is not

Big Project

you can invest each Quarter except Q2, and cash in at the end of each investment +1$ for the Initiator of the Big Project +1$ for each resource invested properly goes to its investor; IF more resources of a specific kind are invested than the project needed, each investor will get only 0.5$ for its resource. success!

Before the year begins Each investor draws a Big Project and a Small Project Investors start with 1 People resource (red) and 1 stick ($) Investors decide which Big Project they want to continue together*

Superb

reached fast enough, decide through a short Paper Scissors Stone game

In each Quarter, with the exceptions below, each Investor will be able to Get 1 new Resource (randomly).

Trade – trade with whoever you want, but you can only initiate a trade when it’s your turn Invest – when all investors have decided what they want to invest in the Big Project, count 1, 2, 3 and all put their resources Let the year begin!

Q1. All good, No exception Q2. Something happened…you can’t invest in the Big Project Q3. All super good, you can draw 1 extra Resource :) Q4. All good, end of year coming, No exception.

End of the year came

from this project DOUBLES!!

5

people

technology

people

Training Innovators. Addendum

customer insights

IV. Angel Investors - projects

know-how

technology

know-how know-how

people

know-how

people people

know-how technology

know-how

customer customer insights insights

technology

One of the small projects

know-how

6

technology

know-how

people

technology

know-how

technology

customer insights know-how

know-how

know-how

One of the Big Projects for 3-4 players (above) and for 5-6 players (left)

tech

people

customer insights

customer customer technology know-how insightsinsights

people know-how

cus ins

know-how

people

customer technology technologypeople insights

people people

pe

know-how

technology

customer customer people know-how insights insights

customer customer insights insights

know-how

technology

know-how

tech

Training Innovators. Addendum

7

Training Innovators. Addendum

V. additional analysis of games tested Circle of Trust Physical layer: board game (without a board) with different elements (to insert image), made for 3-6 players.

Narrative/Gameplay: a meeting of several investors and a project manager, where a project manager proposes a project to implement. For successfully delivering the project he shall need resources, often needing a contribution from investors, thus need to agree with them on what resources they invest / if they want to, and what will be their return on investment – the project manager can split 6 points among the investors and himself, with a minimum set of 2 points for himself. Each player takes the role of the project manager by turn.

Main Type: Economic, negotiation Goal mechanic: Win by getting most points. You get points according to your successful investments / project management successes and according to the agreements you settle with the other project managers or investors.

Game Mechanics: • Negotiation – setting agreements in order to make successful projects and get points; • Hand management – strategically managing the resources one has; • Randomness – the projects are selected randomly, the resources are selected randomly for the investors;

Game pieces Different types of resources are represented with different colors but same shapes, suggesting maybe each resource has same degree of importance, same value, just the color making the differentiation.

Between the physical version – i.e. colored plastic rings – and a possible more abstract version – e.g. with game cards – there doesn’t seem to be that much difference. The added value the former brings in my view lays in the interaction a player has with it, for e.g. when one invests his resources in the project he would need to stick the rings onto the tower-rod. The action itself might reflect more in player’s mind the investment action than working with game cards.

An interesting piece is the shield each player gets, which serves as a shelter for their resources such that the others don’t know what resources one has. That, of course, stimulates the negotiation because it introduces the incertitude over what one or other could provide. But the fact the shield exists and players hide their resources after it is a good physical metaphor for how often in negotiation the parties ‘hide’ their available resources, sometimes even their intentions and so on, to get or maintain more advantageous positions compared to their counter-parties. If the physical shield were replaced by a verbal/written rule: that you may choose whether to show or not your resources (or cards, in case it was made as card game), I believe it would take more time for a player to appropriate / interiorize the rule rather than when the ‘rule’ comes with the physical metaphor which always reminds the player, at a glance, what it is all about. As seen in the test, it also leaves

8

Training Innovators. Addendum

open invitations for playful dynamics as, for e.g., a player acting out obviously as if he’d want to look over the shield .

Silent Game Physical layer – game using wooden blocks in different shapes/colors; Narrative/Gameplay: two players (or in our case also three players) are active and another one is observer; the game consists in the active players taking turns in placing each a wooden block on the table, however they consider. The only rule is: ‘you don’t speak’. The players or the observer will tacitly decide for themselves when the ‘game’ is over. The observer will…observe, writing down changes in players’ behaviors during the game. At the end players and observer discuss about what happened.

Goal mechanic: Everybody and nobody wins. There is no clear goal and no clear winning or losing state known at the beginning; any goal that might arise during the play is somehow tacitly agreed or disagreed upon.

Game Mechanics: Turn taking, Exploration Physical pieces, Abstract ideas The game is played with physical pieces but the pieces have standard/predefined geometrical shapes (e.g. cone, cube, etc) and colors, without having any kind of direct or obvious meaning attached other than the one the persons assign to them. Thus even though physical, they are extremely abstract.

Nevertheless, as kids also use it for that, their simplicity allows for combining them in almost unlimited ways, providing a lot of space for improvisation, exploration which in at least initial phases tend to go towards creating structures similar to real world structures – the fascination of being a kind of architect of anything.

Motivation As such, the motivation driver for players is very interesting since they start with no real goal, nothing like the win vs. lose logic usually driving games. Seems that once the game starts and players bear silence, they explore different possibilities: trying to understand the other’s intentions and design (OR not), trying to contribute to the other’s work/collaborate OR trying to diverge, trying to lead OR to follow the process.

The silent play in itself, these different approaches that play out silently and the continuous state of trying to understand what’s happening seems to provide for the motivation of the players throughout the game.

Silent Game. (2013). www.habraken.com/html/the_silent_game.htm

9

Training Innovators. Addendum

The Settlers of Catan (1995, Klaus Teuber)

Year Published # of Players

1995 3 − 4

Skills: Clever trading, strategy, tactical skill, luck (“The Settlers of Cat-

User Suggested # of Players Mfg Suggested Ages

Best with 4 players Recommended with 3, 4 players 10 and up

Playing Time

90 minutes

Narrative/Gameplay:

Subdomain

Family Games Strategy Games

In Settlers of Catan, players try to be the dominant force on the island of

Category

Negotiation

Catan by building settlements, cities, and roads. On each turn dice are

Mechanic

Dice Rolling Hand Management Modular Board Route/Network Building Trading

an,” 2013)

rolled to determine what resources the island produces. Players collect these resources to build up their civilizations to get to 10 victory points and win the game.(“The Settlers of Catan - BoardGameGeek,” 2013).

The game board representing the island is composed of hexagonal tiles of different land types which are laid out randomly at the beginning of each game. (“The Settlers of Catan-Wikipedia,” 2013)

The Settlers of Catan - BoardGameGeek. (2013). Board Game Geek. Retrieved from www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/13/ the-settlers-of-catan

Players compete to get points by strategically placing their Settlements/Cities and roads to connect these on the map. The game ensures enough randomization (dice rolling for each turn, tile randomization) as to not be able to create a single optimum strategy of playing based on the resources placement and to have to trade with others if one wants to win.

Goal mechanic: Points are given for building Settlements, Cities and for other special accomplishments, e.g. for building longest road. First to get to 10 points wins, and game stops.

Game Mechanics: • Dice Rolling – randomization; • Hand Management – managing one’s available resources; • Modular Board – randomizing access to resources; • Route/Network Building – making strategies to build best routes or position the best way the Settlement/City;

• Trading – having to exchange resources;

Physical pieces, Abstract ideas It’s a nicely crafted board game including the terrain tiles, resource cards and other ‘special’ cards and physical pieces for the elements as roads, Settlements, cities, so on. It comes in different versions – produced by different manufacturers at different times – and thus depending on the quality of the set, the pieces vary in terms of craftsmanship, for example ranging from cardboard terrain tiles to 3D built tiles depicting the resources regions (pictures of an Ore region tile - right).

The logical link between the game’s physical elements and the narrative is strong, the elements depicting what the logical element represents.

The Settlers of Catan. (2013). Retrieved from www.catan.com/game/settlers-catan The Settlers of Catan-Wikipedia. (2013). Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Settlers_of_Catan The Settlers of Catan - BoardGameGeek. (2013). Board Game Geek. Retrieved from www.boardgamegeek.com/ boardgame/13/the-settlers-of-catan

10

Training Innovators. Addendum

Year Published # of Players User Suggested # of Players

1997 2 − 7 Best with 5 players Recommended with 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 players

Mfg Suggested Ages Playing Time Subdomain Category

13 and up 45 minutes Family Games Card Game Farming Negotiation Hand Management Set Collection Trading

Mechanic

Bohnanza (1997, Uwe Rosenberg) Who is it targeted towards: adults, families, generally 10 years older people and up. (“The Settlers of Catan,” 2013)

Skills exercised / needed (by FatherGeek.com “Bohnanza-FatherGeek,” 2013): Active Listening & Communication, Counting & Math, Logical & Critical Decision Making, Memorization & Pattern/Color Matching, Risk vs. Reward, Hand/Resource Management, Trading

Narrative/Gameplay: In this game you make Gold points for farming beans.

Bohnanza is a German-style card game of trading and politics. It is played with a deck of cards with comical illustrations of eleven different types of beans (of varying scarcities), which the players are trying to plant and sell in order to raise money. The Bohnanza-BoardGameGeek. (2013). BoardGameprincipal restriction is that players may only be farming two or three types of bean at Geek.com. Retrieved from www.boardgamegeek. once, but they obtain beans of all different types randomly from the deck, and so must com/boardgame/11/bohnanza engage in trading with the other players to be successful. (“Bohnanza-Wikipedia,” 2013) Perhaps its oddest feature is that you cannot rearrange your hand, as you need to play the cards in the order that you draw them. (“Bohnanza-BoardGameGeek,” 2013)

Goal mechanic: Gold (points) are collected through harvesting a bean field once the field has enough beans planted (beans cards collected in it) as it depicts on the card itself. In the example in the left, once the field I have of cocoa bean has reached four cocoa cards, meaning I have four cocoa beans planted in it, I can harvest it and I would get four Gold points.

Game Mechanics • Hand Management – managing one’s available cards in the hand; • Set Collection - players collect and harvest different types of beans (cards) • Trading – having to trade beans with other players, sometimes even give them for free as to get rid of them and not need to plant them in your own fields

Phisicality The game consists of cards - up to 154 cards including up to 11 types of beans. Some rare, some common (“Bohnanza-FatherGeek,” 2013). The Golden points are actually also cards – you use the same bean cards and just turn it on the other side, where it has a Golden coin drawn to depict the Golden point.

Bohnanza-BoardGameGeek. (2013). BoardGameGeek.com. Retrieved from www.boardgamegeek.com/ boardgame/11/bohnanza Bohnanza-FatherGeek. (2013). FatherGeek.com. Retrieved from www.fathergeek.com/bohnanza/ Bohnanza-Rio Grande Games. (2013). Rio Grande Games. Retrieved from http://riograndegames.com/ Game/36-Bohnanza Bohnanza-Wikipedia. (2013). Wikipedia.org. Retrieved from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bohnanza

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Training Innovators. Addendum

VI. paper “Building Blocks of Innovators” Building blocks of innovators Claudiu Serban

Master student, Southern University of Denmark clser11@student.sdu.dk

Abstract

Innovators have been seen as a special race of people. Different research strains though shed a light on the fact that the above idea is at least exaggerated and innovation, though not having _a_ recipe, is highly related to context and to social interactions. Nevertheless, even being able to get involved in contexts or social interactions in ways which have high potential for driving innovation assumes some core characteristics of a person.

The paper attempts to grasp the concept of innovation in a broad scope, with a focus on the people behind it and what makes them innovators. Instead of redrawing other squares on what innovation is, the approach is to understand the gaps between current squares and introduce people’s understanding in the picture in a comparative/reflective way. That allows for reflection on current people’s understanding of the subject and implications of it.

Introduction

Innovation is a buzzword in economies, both at organizations and at institutional/ governmental level. It has become so that innovation is one of the main competitive advantages an organization can have to maintain its position in the market or acquire more market share; at macro level same important role is applied to innovation in a state, be it in the sense of getting better at performing in its governing role or in the sense of ‘stimulating’ conditions for organizations to flourish at innovation.

Talking about it in this way uncovers lenses through which we see the picture. It seems like innovation is related to rational decision making, ‘somebody’ can design conditions which make innovation flourish.

Despite its high importance, what it is actually is still in discussion from a multitude of viewpoints. The fact there isn’t yet _A_ formula for it might also be a reason for its glorifications status.

A search on Amazon.com (2012 November), considered ‘world’s largest online retailer and one of the nation’s (US) biggest book sellers’ (Eells, 2012), reports almost 25000 books containing the word ‘innovation’ in their title. Denning and Dunham (2010) report in their book that by 2009 September, same search returned 9300 books results.

The ‘What’ and ‘How’ behind innovation seems to be treated seriously as worldwide the number of books (as well research papers published) increased highly. Describing our times, Nowotny says “it is a fascination and quest for innovation” (Nowotny, 2008; 2006). Indeed it seems.

We’re either getting there – nailing it to the wall as ‘this is it’ – or we’re going to burn down the enthusiasm fuel on the road and then take it as it seems to be – vague, changeable, not definable at a general level.

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Training Innovators. Addendum

I believe over time, due to the observed economic impact of new things that come to life, we have come to glorify or reify innovation and innovators. Innovation has become a thing and though the ‘thing’ has people and most of the times very tangled stories behind it, most of the ways of understanding the thing came to be through systemic approaches similar to designing an industrial assembly line for objects. Though views on it have evolved and diversified by drawing from the understanding of other sciences like sociology, psychology, as reviewed in the next part, the systemic approach of understanding is still a mainstream.

When we consider innovators we again run into different formulas of what they do and how to become one, as many as there are innovation viewpoints.

I will take mostly the standpoint that innovation is not a thing but a social construct built through people’s understandings, discourses and interactions. As such, it evolves over time as new patterns of conversation and meaning emerge (Stacey, 2000). In the same direction, Godin (2008) referred to it as ‘Innovation, or the new, does not exist as such’.

Talking about it this way, being an innovator becomes less overrated and more accessible to normal human beings. I believe every individual has innovative characteristics to some extent, though it is true that not all will be recognized as innovators. Coming to be recognized as innovator or doing an innovation seems highly context related and especially related to patterns of meaning and understanding. Even so it is still worth investigating whether there is some core characteristics which if people had would make them able to cope with different contexts, with new ways of understanding world around and of acting as to bring innovations to life.

Identifying key core characteristics, building blocks of innovators, is of interest to the economic environment in a couple of ways: by better understanding these, education can foster ways (methods, tools) of teaching innovation with better outcomes in the real world. A different view point could also imply at a company level a different way of seeing and thus organizing R&D functions.

The paper is built in a comparative way between the literature’s and people’s standpoints on innovation and innovators. The focus is on innovators, but taking a stand on that assumes ways of understanding innovation; that is why both concepts are explored. People’s standpoints, especially ‘normal’ people’s, are important because it’s their understanding of innovation, not the one described in papers, what guides their decisions in relation to innovations they see around them, when they innovate themselves or want to become more innovative.

Background The Oslo Manual (OECD, 2005) defines innovation as ‘the implementation of a new or significantly improved product (good or service), a new process, a new marketing method, or a new organizational method in business practices, workplace organization, or external relations.’

Fonseca (2002) signals two main streams in the mainstream literature on innovation.

The first one sees innovation as a ‘rational, intentional, sequential managerial Process’ based on strategic choice and planning, while the second sees it as ‘social, political and behavioral process’. The latter is more human-centered and proposes ‘shared visions and culture as organizational binders and control devices to attain desired behaviors’.

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Training Innovators. Addendum

He underlines that in both streams innovation is seen as something that can be controlled by human, which ‘humans can purposefully design, in advance, the conditions under which innovation will occur’.

Fonseca’s approach, on the other hand, draws from complex responsive processes of relating (Stacey, 2000) and focuses on ‘the ongoing self-organizing processes of communicative interaction in which the products of innovation emerge’, arguing that ‘these are not controllable’. Henry & Bogers (2012) complete Fonseca’s view saying that ‘the emergence of new patterns of interaction or conversation can eventually lead to innovation, which consequently can be seen as a new patterning of our experiences of being together’. They shed a light on the importance of simple ordinary conversations in local interactions between people, in their case within an organization, situations in which ‘what is actually innovated and what is not innovated actually takes place’.

Denning & Dunham (2010), among others, distinguish innovation from invention, dismounting the invention myth– the common belief that most innovations start with a smart invention, thus focus shall be put on creativity and generation of high value ideas. ‘An idea that changes no one’s behavior is only an invention, not an innovation’ (Denning, 2012).

Denning & Dunham draw from Peter Drucker (1985), pointing that ‘“new knowledge”, the only source that depends on inventions, is the least significant’ source of innovation. They instead propose a more important role to be awarded to adoption processes – how you get the idea adopted – and refer to innovation as ‘new practice adopted by a community’.

Through different examples they show how ‘there is often no clear pattern of an <<idea that changed the world>> - in fact the <<idea>> was often invented as an afterthought to explain the new practice. What is clear is that, in every case, an identifiable community adopted a new practice.’

In a literature review of how Innovation comes about, Denning & Dunham (2010) distinguish four different categories: Mystical – innovation seen as special talent, good fortune, magic; this is supported usually by inspirational stories of successful individuals Process – innovation as process that can be managed; some of the popular process models are Pipeline (Bush, Kline), Diffusion (Rogers) and the focus is on management to establish proper processes and conditions under which innovation will appear; Leadership – innovation as ‘change of practice’ brought through leader’s strategy and action is supported by models like The Sources Model of Peter Drucker and the Learning Network Model of Donald Schon.

Generative – innovation comes through ‘individual’s skill of achieving adoption of new practice in a community’. (Spinosa, Flores and Dreyfus) The History Making pattern – called as such because in each of their cases the person interacted with the practices of a community and ‘changed its course of history’ – supports the generative view on innovation. Denning & Dunham subscribe their work describing innovation and innovator’s ‘ways’ to these generative models and distinguish practices from descriptions through simple examples as: ‘a map is not the territory; a description of jazz improvisation does not help one become good improviser’.

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Training Innovators. Addendum

Methodology Pre-made boxes The approach, besides literature review, consists of conducting individual semi-structured interviews, recording audio and analyzing the discussions. Since I wanted to grasp people’s understanding on the subject in a broad spectrum, the method of semi-structured interviews was preferred over structured interviews because it allowed for people to develop their own way of articulating their thoughts into words; by that I avoided designing some specific ‘boxes’ of understanding of the topics that I would then try to force people into.

The ‘boxes’ I created before having the interviews were the two main, starting questions: ‘What do you understand by Innovation’ and “If you consider innovation as you described it already, then what is an ‘innovator’ made of? You might think of some specific knowledge or skills or attitudes such a person has” The ‘how’ of analysis The interviews recorded were listened again and quotes (keywords, sentences or context descriptions, as needed) were extracted which seemed to express the interviewees understanding with respect to the subject in discussion.

In the process of reviewing the first interviews, even though I did not explicitly create categories beforehand, while reviewing recording after recording, some themes were starting to link up in my mind. Thus, implicitly I started becoming easily more aware of some words or themes in the discussions. This way of resonating also implies becoming less aware of maybe other themes that emerged in the discussions because I was following/confirming the ones that maybe resonated with my way of understanding the concepts behind.

The results of the analysis are presented in two ways: as themes around which discussions have happened and also as storylines, following up on a person’s way of talking and thinking throughout the interview. That is used as to compare the ‘making averages’ approach and the particularity of each individual’s understandings.

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Training Innovators. Addendum

Data and analysis The people interviewed The interviews took place in the interval of 10th to 20th of November with the following: Employee of a Danish multinational toy manufacturing organization; working as Operating Model Manager First name

Previous background / occupation

Nationality

Manel

Communications consultant

Spanish

Students of MSc in IT Product Design First name

Previous background / occupation

Nationality

Li Caroline Rosa Claudiu

BSc. Industrial Design BSc. Mathematics and Statistics in Economy BSc. Industrial Design BSc. Computer Sciences

Chinese Canadian Spanish Romanian

Student of MSc in Innovation and Business First name

Previous background / occupation

Nationality

Sarunas

BSc. Applied Physics

Lithuanian

Professor in Innovation, with a focus on Participatory Innovation and informed by complex responsive processes theories First name

Previous background / occupation

Nationality

Henry

Consultant, working with theatre in organizational change

Danish

Inventor, entrepreneur First name

Previous background / occupation

Nationality

Carsten

He describes himself as inventor for ‘as long as he remembers’

Danish

It is worth mentioning that the students and the professor interviewed are currently all part of Mads Clausen Institute at the Southern University of Denmark in Sønderborg. Also, one of the students interviewed is actually I, as I took course of the invitation an interviewee – Rosa – proposed, to respond to the same questions.

Carsten, the inventor-entrepreneur interviewed, is running his company in a setting called iFabrikken (‘the Entrepreneurs Factory’).

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Training Innovators. Addendum

Innovation What is it all about?

The summarized response through themes is that innovation is mainly about newness and practice. A secondary, weaker theme is technology.

Newness refers to ‘creating new ideas, figure out new solutions, transform old stuff into something new’ (Carsten), ‘different’ (Li), which ‘change’ or ‘challenge the status quo’ (Manel).

Practice has a few defining directions very interrelated: The idea has to be put in practice. The idea ‘has to come to life’; it is ‘just an idea if it doesn’t come out’ (Sarunas) and as such it could not be called innovation.

A first particular aspect of being put in practice, is that the materialized idea has to be used – it’s innovation ‘when people use it’, more specifically if we consider ‘product innovation (then) people have to buy and use it’ and for ‘process innovation (it has to be) implemented and used’ (Sarunas).

Highly related to this comes the subtheme of value understood as ‘it has to serve the needs of people (…) and bring value (to the people)’ (Claudiu).

Another aspect is the influence and impact it brings - it has to ‘have an impact in people’s everyday life (…) in a broad sense’ (Caroline). The idea becomes innovation ‘when it’s adopted and makes a change in people’s life’ (Claudiu).

Finally, a strong stand of Henry which brings a different view point to these previous subthemes is that of innovation as a ‘change in behavior of a significant group of people’.

Technology came in discussion, with one exception, only as topic related to the output of research. The exception, an interesting strong stand point, came from Carsten, the inventor.

From the beginning of the interview he defined innovation through three topics ‘creating new stuff (…), thinking about the electronics for tomorrow (…and) networking’.

How does it happen?

It happens through or is strongly influenced by combination of ideas, scientific breakthroughs, social interactions and change in practices.

Combination of ideas seems a main part of how innovation comes about, being mentioned in all of the interviews. It’s described as ‘combining bits and pieces from different ideas’ (Manel), some related to your past experiences (Carsten). It also comes in the form of ‘looking at something from a different angle’ (Manel).

Scientific breakthroughs are seen as important source of innovation as well (Caroline, Li).

Interesting enough is that a ‘revolution’ in the market (Manel) or creating a ‘new trend’ where ‘when everybody goes right, you go left and it proves a good direction’ (Li) are not necessarily associated with scientific breakthrough. An example in that direction comes from Manel, reflecting on Apple products as ‘they took ideas or ways of interacting with objects which were there already, you could see it if you looked at people, and then they put into some products; and there you go, a revolutionary innovative product…’

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Training Innovators. Addendum

Social interactions can be described through one example that came up in Carsten’s interview: a person came to him with an idea of an invention and a possible business trajectory out of that invention; the invention, by its character, targeted a specific relatively small market; through discussing with Carsten about it they both realized that the potential of the invention is a lot greater if they modify it in a way which came up as idea during their conversation; the target market would worth hundreds of time more than in the initial plan/idea, ‘if I change it and make it my way’. As part of the same story, Carsten emphasized also the topic of having a network of people – ‘this was a guy I met earlier this year in relation to another project (…) and he remembered me and thought that <<hey, maybe he (Carsten) has a good idea of how to change my idea or actually just make my idea>>’.

In the same time, another story of same Carsten seemed contrasting, pointing towards the kind of struggles that actually take place in the social interactions when change is about to happen: “You don’t always find the right persons (to work with)… because it’s super difficult.

Some of them influence the way that I think and the way the idea is thought of, because they go like <<ah, you have to do this, or we could do that>> and then sometimes I really have to kick them and say <<Yeah, yeah.. you can do a lot of things, you can paint it blue, you can make it red, you can make it square… but that’s not my idea. My idea is this, and it stays within this idea and that’s it. You can help me sell it or whatever you do, but don’t touch my idea.>> I know it sounds really strict sometimes but you have this feeling that the concept is really good, so no point in changing it because it is a really good idea. And I would kick myself if I changed it and I couldn’t sell it.” (Carsten) The innovation seen as change in practices and in people’s behaviors ‘can only happen in human interactions; a new practice is emerging in the interactions between human beings’ (Henry). Seen from this angle, Henry continues by describing innovation as an ‘ongoing change of ideas’.

Innovators Though most of the characteristics that came up through interviews are strongly interconnected, four main categories of themes were formed, each containing subthemes.

The main categories and subthemes are as follows: Open minded Different views – open and interested to different views, able to think from different stand points; Creating ideas – being creative, able to generate new ideas; Connecting ideas – able to bridge different ideas together, may be even from different fields of work; Taking risks – having the courage to explore new situations, contexts, to step outside of your comfort zone and push your boundaries; Coping with change – able to cope with changing contexts.

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Training Innovators. Addendum

Make it happen Drive & persistence – having the motivation and energy, taking initiative; being persistent, committing to make things happen; Believe – having enough self-confidence; a challenging point from Li who was wondering about the validity of a though she had - “there’s no difference between innovation levels of people. The only difference is whether you believe or not, and then what you do about it”; Implement – able to make ideas real, to materialize; this includes finding the right resources needed, and it is highly dependent on the field of the innovation since it will assume skills in that field.

Know and understand Knowledge – both specific/deep field knowledge and broad/general knowledge; there seems to be an understanding that broad knowledge and experience (‘knowledge of life’ as Manel would say) is very important for being able to connect ideas through different fields of work and being able to spot opportunities; Learn – able to easily learn new things; learning from failures; knowing yourself; learning from or copying others, and not taking for granted that that is the only way to do it; Doing it better – an attitude of always improving your skills as well as desire of doing things better; Market understanding – able to spot opportunities in the market.

Connect with people Human interactions – able to foster (good) relations with people, networking; Influence – ‘able to interact with others in ways which influences the interaction’; (…) to change other’s practice you need to be able to change your own practice, allow to be influenced’ (Henry); Collaborate – able to share your ideas and work with others to make things happen; ‘no one can succeed just by their own’ (Li).

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Training Innovators. Addendum

Conclusions The above investigation does not provide for a complete image of what innovation and innovators are. More than trying to give ‘general truth’ on the subject, something that I consider a false issue since I see ‘innovation’ as a social object, the paper points towards the importance of ‘normal’ people’s understanding of it. It acknowledges that individual’s understanding matters because a person’s understanding of the concept shapes any of the persons’ experiences related to attempts of innovating or becoming more innovative. For example, in an attempt of innovating something, while it’s likely that Carsten would invest more time into creating the technologies for tomorrow – since that came as recurring theme in his understanding of what innovation is and how it comes about -, it’s likely that Henry would invest more time in conversations with different stakeholders.

Nevertheless, as overview of the investigation, innovation is mainly about newness and practice, as well as technology might play important roles in some situations. As such it refers to new concepts or improved concepts of things (product, process or others) which come to reality and have an impact in a significant group of people’s life. Related to how innovation comes about, the interviewees did not showcase the view so prominent in mainstream literature – that of innovation as rational choice and manageable process – but most did put a great emphasis on ‘the idea’ and getting the idea to practice, and less or no attention given to the kind of human interactions and conversational processes that happen until the idea is recognized as ‘the idea’ and from there on, view supported more by Fonseca (2002). Another view was that innovation can be seen as an ‘ongoing change of ideas’ and a ‘change in people’s behaviors’.

Four main themes describe the building blocks of an innovator: Open minded – the innovator is able to create, bridge ideas and cope with risks and change; Makes it happen – gets ideas implemented to reality and has the drive and persistence to initiate and follow through until things happen; Knows and understands – has more broad knowledge and learns new things easily; Connects with people – is able to work with others, and to participate in human interactions and conversations in qualitative ways which allow influencing himself, the others, the ideas and practices at stake.

Discussion

The interviewees’ previous professional as well as cultural backgrounds are diverse, nevertheless the interviews were taken all within the area of Sønderborg and all of interviewees them have been living in Denmark for at least two years (the case of the students). This combined with the fact the students and the professor are part of the same University and have interacted previously, would point that for a broader view on the topics, people from much more different environments should be chosen for further research.

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Training Innovators. Addendum

Bibliography

About iFabrikken. (n.d.). Retrieved December 06, 2012, from iFabrikken: http://ifabrikken.dk/om-ifabrikken/ Denning, P. (2012, March). The idea idea. Communications of the ACM vol. 55, no. 3, pp. 30-33.

Denning, P., & Dunham, R. (2010). The innovator's way. MIT. Drucker, P. (1985). Innovation and Entrepreneurship. New York: Harper & Row. Dutta, S. (2012). Global Innovation Index 2012. INSEAD and WIPO. Eells, S. (2012, November 5). Amazon.com. 2012 Earnings: Third Quarter. Retrieved November 27, 2012, from New York Times: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/amazon_inc/index.html Fonseca, J. (2002). Complexity and Innovation in Organizations. London: Routledge.

Godin, B. (2008). Innovation: The History of a Category. Project on the Intellectual History of Innovation.

Larsen, H., & Bogers, M. (2012). The role of improvisation in processes of innovation.

Proceedings of the Participatory Innovation Conference. Melbourne, Australia.

Nowotny, H. (2006). The Quest for Innovation and Cultures of Technology. Cultures of Technology and the Quest for Innovation, pp. 1-38.

Nowotny, H. (2008). Insatiable Curiosity: Innovation in a Fragile Future. Cambridge : MIT Press.

OECD. (2005). Oslo Manual. Third Edition. OECD and Eurostat.

Stacey, R. (2000). Strategic Management and Organisational Dynamics, 3rd edn. London: Financial Times-Prentice Hall.

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