Think about this.
You’re employed for a board recreation producer, and you’ve got been requested to enhance the gross sales of your chess video games. They’ve been slowly falling over the previous few years and your boss has requested you to give you progressive options to make it extra interesting and enhance gross sales.
How would you strategy this innovation problem?
Lots of people may start considering that innovation means discovering methods to “enhance” the product. Individuals naturally wish to innovate by including worth, and this normally means a bias in the direction of including extra.
On this case, what types of improvements may we introduce to replace chess and make it “higher”:
- Add a brand new piece which may solely transfer by leaping over one other piece?
- Add a 3rd / fourth totally different color to make it a 3-4 participant recreation?
- Add a rule that each set variety of turns, the gamers swap sides?
- Add a factors system the place the winner will not be the one that checkmates the king, however as an alternative the one that earns essentially the most factors by taking essentially the most opponent items?
- Add a pack of playing cards subsequent to the chess items which randomly present power-ups to particular person items?
- Enable a participant to “degree up” their items over time like in Dungeons & Dragons?
- Change the design of the items to match characters from widespread franchises?
These are all concepts, however maybe that is the flawed method to consider the problem.
Chess has been round for 1000’s of years. The foundations have been refined over generations till now, right into a system which is each straightforward to be taught however complicated to grasp. Each bit serves a particular and useful goal.
In a method, the product has been confirmed to work.
It doesn’t should be mounted.
If it ain’t broke, don’t repair it
What if the innovation problem as an alternative will not be about altering the product, however issues exterior of the product?
Utilizing one thing just like the Ten Kinds of Innovation framework, how may you discover alternative ways of innovating an present product?
- How may you innovate the method a neighborhood of individuals play collectively?
- How may you innovate how chess suits right into a bundle of different video games which make them larger collectively than individually?
- How may you present a tailor-made service to those that wish to play chess?
- How may you innovate the model of your chess boards with influencers to symbolize what it means to play your chess set?
- How may you innovate your inner processes, enterprise fashions and constructions to make chess accessible in new methods at new value factors?
- How may you innovate the channels to get chess to individuals who in any other case wouldn’t consider taking part in it?
There are extra methods to innovate than simply bettering the product.
Creativity & Innovation professional: I assist people and firms construct their creativity and innovation capabilities, so you possibly can develop the following breakthrough thought which clients love. Chief Editor of Ideatovalue.com and Founder / CEO of Improvides Innovation Consulting. Coach / Speaker / Creator / TEDx Speaker / Voted as one of the crucial influential innovation bloggers.
