This is the slide deck for the presentation I delivered in Budapest at the UA Europe conference, 2016.

1. THE INNOVATION GAME
AUDREY CHRISTOPHORY
UA EUROPE 2016

2. OVERVIEW
• Who I am
• Why it isn’t SMART to innovate more.
• How to cheat at innovation.
• [Controversial slide]
• The Innovation Game (a.k.a A Parallel Universe)
• Our outcomes

3. WHO AM I?
• A technical communicator
• An information nerd
• A non-linear thinker

4. ONE, TWO, THREE – INNOVATE!
• Innovation is the Holy Grail of business.
• Most of us are already innovating as fast and as well as we can.
• “Innovate more!” is not a SMART goal.

5. MOVE THE GOAL POSTS
• Change our focus from outcome to process.
• Instead of quantitative outcomes – focus on a culture of innovative
behaviours.
• Create a multi-faceted model of innovation so we have many possible
approaches.

6. MODEL OF INNOVATION
• Our model was derived from Tom Kelley’s 10 Faces of Innovation.
• Splits innovation behaviours into 10 sets with different interests and
strengths.
• Regroups sets into Learners, Organisers, and Builders.
• This provided a number of alternate routes towards innovation.
• Creates space for everyone to contribute.

7. HOW REAL IS THE REAL WORLD?
• “Everyone wins if you share your ideas.”
• “Being an innovator will lead to promotions and adulation.”
• “We’re all in this together.”
• “You should put the good of the team and organisation over personal
interest.”
• “Success for one team member is success for all of us.”

8. THE CONTROVERSIAL SLIDE
• Every person considers personal interest first.
• If it’s bad for me, I’m not going to suggest it.
Perceived individual gain must outweigh perceived personal risk.
Every. Time.

9. PERSONAL RISK TRUMPS TEAM BENEFIT
• Individual risks include:
• Personal
• Professional
• Social

10. WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE?
• Minimise the risk as much as possible.
• Eliminate as many possible obstacles as we can.
• Make the return on all innovation-supporting-behaviours as high as we can.
• And while we’re at it, let’s do it for free!

11. OUR PARALLEL UNIVERSE
We are going to create a simple game world with the following rules:
1. Every idea for innovation is a Quest.
2. Status is gained by participating in Quests.
3. Anyone can propose a Quest.
4. Anyone can join any Quest they like, in any capacity.
5. Innovation Champions approve Quests or help players refine a Quest
proposal so it can be approved.
6. To be successful, a Quest achieves the proposer’s vision or lead to a new
Quest as a result of lessons learnt.
7. The Quest terminates with a Proclamation of Appreciation.

12. PARALLEL UNIVERSES NEED A BIT OF SPACE

13. LOOKS TOO EASY TO WORK!
• It does look easy!
• Why the colours?
• Why not a digital resource?
• Is this just a sneaky way to get people to work even harder than they already
are for nothing more?

14. THINGS TO CONSIDER BEFORE YOU START
• How will you seed the Call to Arms panel?
• Who will be the gate-keepers?
• What happens to completed quests?

15. OUR OUTCOMES
• We had people volunteering out of the woodwork. The innovation game team
roughly doubled each week.
• We started acting as innovation consultants for other initiatives.
• More people started actively contributing to innovation.

16. WHAT NEXT?
• What metrics can we capture?
• How can we scale this in a global organisation?
• Can we create hook-points between the innovation game and the real world?
• What else could we build in?
• Can we tweak any variables to gain innovation momentum?

17. QUESTIONS?
AUDREY.CHRISTOPHORY@GMAIL.COM