Comments on: Insights from Innotown

By: Tamar

Tamar — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:01:10 +0000

I absolutely agree with you about the strength of ideas visualization, enabling people to play with ideas in order to better grasp the full potential of an idea.
As another listener in Innotown, I want to add another point I took from Michael’s talk. My feeling was that he emphasized the point that once we have ideas we should check them very carefuly from different perspectives before we are trying to raise new ideas.
In many cases we already have “jewels” in our hands, but we will realize it only if we take a very close look at them and play with the various options for developing them. So the playfullness with the visualization is meant not only for better understanding and selling of the idea but also for realizing additional options rising from the same idea.

By: Fabian Szulanski

Fabian Szulanski — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 06:57:55 +0000

I strongly agree with Amnon:

Narratives, storytelling, rich pictures, influence/causal diagrams and other visual expression tools could for sure function as prototypes of intangible value proposals.
Examples from the latter could be seen in
http://www.senteco.com/storymap/example.htm

Cheers,

Fabian.

By: Amnon Levav

Amnon Levav — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 12:37:31 +0000

Thanks Hans, for the comment and feedback. “Plesting” was definitely another useful term introduced by Michael, one of several. I too thought that his comment about comming to meetings with prototypes was insightful. One thought i started playing around with following this comment of his was how i can come to meetings with “prototypes” in all those cases were the issue is not a concrete product, and sometimes not a product at all. For example, if i come into a management discussion about accepting a new employee in a nele defined role, what would be the “prototype”? What i tried out, inspired by Michael’s comment, was to put on the table as concrete as possible a description of what the person’s specific new proposed role would be. If the discussion is about some ethical matter or value of the company the “prototype” could be a letter communicating it to the employees, or a slogan or tag line. I hope that i am managing to communicate something with these examples. In short, my recommended experiment: ask yourself before every meeting what could serve as “prototype” for whatever subject is being discussed.

By: Hans Kotthaus

Hans Kotthaus — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 21:26:31 +0000

I also participated at Innotown. Thanks for your summary of the very interesting session made by Michael Schrage - and by the way - for your own session about problem solving which was a new approach I had not heard before and which I surely will use in my work as an industrial designer.

One comment/addition on your summary above - pt.2: Iterate…
Fear of the “merely incremental” was one side of the story. Schrage introduced the term plesting, meaning “playful testing” as a positive approach and a good way to innovate by making prototypes and testing hypotheses. He pointed out that prototypes engage interaction, and I remember his words at the end of his session: “Never go into an innovation meeting without a prototype”