Accelerate Innovation with Applied Gameful Design

There's no denying it – it takes effort to achieve significant improvement or innovation. And, even if you are clever about it, there is no avoiding some level of work.

Edison was very right when he famously quipped that "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." Inspiring ideas quickly lose their charm once we discover that they'll actually take work to implement, that you'll need to accept some failures along the way, and that you'll need to change some of the very systems you previously worked so hard to implement.

Indeed, it is the nature of any organised system to establish and maintain a sense of order – growth and development is always a threat to this.

The key to innovation is not simply about being creative and coming up with good ideas (though that is your critical first step) – but rather, it is in executing these ideas – staying engaged throughout the 99% work bit, to make them happen.

This where game design comes in. Games are all about progress-making, and persistence through challenge. If we apply the right game design to our projects and our innovation management, we'll be able to break through work plateaus and maximise our return on effort. In other words, better game design will help us to focus our efforts and "level up" faster.


The Level Up model highlights the process of achieving massive innovation. Here are the steps:

1. At this stage, we generate new ideas, playing collaborative and explorative games to unlock new possibilities. It's all thoroughly exciting and inspiring. This is where we attend conferences and events, and this is where we have creativity sessions to stimulate new thinking. For every unit of effort we put in, it will feel like we get a five-fold return.


2. But then, the excitement flattens out, and as the dust settles, we are left with a huge amount of work to do. Here, without the right gameful design, this will feel like a 1:1 return on effort. Done poorly, these innovative projects will drag on and on and on, with no clear sense of progress or purpose. They say that the path to innovation is fraught with failure, and within this challenging, non-linear plateau of work, it is very easy for organisations and teams to give up on trying to make ideas happen altogether (X). Or...


3. If you persist long enough, you'll reach a new break through, and excitement resumes. It'll all seem worth it. You'll be the leaders in your industry, the premium products on the shelves or the most sort after service (etc). Everything input of effort will give you a tenfold return here. Until...


4. We try to secure things, and consolidate our wins. Then, we run the risk of settling, of becoming comfortable, and complacent, rather than maintaining momentum. Where really, we want to be...


5. Here, faster. To get from point 1 to point 5, we'll need to get our head into the game, lift our game and play a better game. And with the right, applied gameful design, this is all very possible.

Stay tuned to learn how ^_^