Think about this.
You’re employed for a board sport 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 provide you with modern options to make it extra interesting and improve gross sales.
How would you strategy this innovation problem?
Lots of people may start considering that innovation means discovering methods to “enhance” the product. Folks naturally need to innovate by including worth, and this normally means a bias in direction of including extra.
On this case, what kinds 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 sport?
- Add a rule that each set variety of turns, the gamers swap sides?
- Add a factors system the place the winner isn’t the one who checkmates the king, however as an alternative the one who earns probably the most factors by taking probably 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 standard franchises?
These are all concepts, however maybe that is the incorrect means to consider the problem.
Chess has been round for 1000’s of years. The principles have been refined over generations till now, right into a system which is each straightforward to be taught however advanced to grasp. Every bit serves a particular and invaluable objective.
In a means, 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 isn’t about altering the product, however issues outdoors of the product?
Utilizing one thing just like the Ten Forms of Innovation framework, how may you discover alternative ways of innovating an present product?
- How may you innovate the means a group of individuals play collectively?
- How may you innovate how chess suits right into a bundle of different video games which make them better collectively than individually?
- How may you present a tailor-made service to those that need 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 inside processes, enterprise fashions and constructions to make chess obtainable 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 enjoying it?
There are extra methods to innovate than simply enhancing the product.
Creativity & Innovation knowledgeable: I assist people and firms construct their creativity and innovation capabilities, so you may develop the following breakthrough thought which clients love. Chief Editor of Ideatovalue.com and Founder / CEO of Improvides Innovation Consulting. Coach / Speaker / Writer / TEDx Speaker / Voted as one of the influential innovation bloggers.
