Games Create Unlikely Innovation - Creativity is Where You Find It

Recently I had a wonderful conversation with a colleague about looking at opportunities to innovate from different perspectives. As with most discussions the high level part went very well. As we proceeded down to progressively lower layers of detail it became very clear that while high level agreement was easily obtained, the actual implementation details were not as easy. Very quickly at various points of the discussion statements appeared such as "Doing that [some degree of implementation] is not as easy you make it out to be." or "I am not sure how such things would be doable." or "The team would have a hard time actually doing something like that."

I halted the conversation and pointed out the trend I was seeing; most of the points were along why things could not be done rather than what could be done given what was available. I mentioned how creative and innovative people follow their passions and dreams, accomplishing what they can with what they have. I called this ability "rising to the highest levels within your own limits".

The most common and consistent examples of doing this are actually in video gamer communities. These are individuals who are doing what they love - playing video games. They are not getting paid to do it. In fact they are often times paying the gaming companies money for the privilege to play. They are under tremendous constraints: they do not have access to the source code, they do not have direct access to key designers, they do not have any direct say into the product other than community influence, and they are not always regarded as leaders as opposed to consumers.

However these games actively nurture creativity and innovation. The first and most common example is the ability to share information among members of the community at hand. Some of them come in the form of forums which most are familiar with. However some take on significantly more. One such endeavor would be for a World of Warcraft site called World of Logs. The site offers graphical analysis widgets of raw logs to the player community to create wonderful dashboards that display game specific critical information in dashboards that rival many professionally done sites for companies. The information is not only displayed in a fixed format, but along contextually relevant dimensions for the community such that the most important information can be quickly and easily found. The fact that developers passionate about a game have applied technical skills, development practices and social networking paradigms typically found in only some of the most innovative companies is truly remarkable. Also consider the fact that the site is heavily constrained: limited budget, limited time, limited people, limited resources, etc. as compared to their corporate counterparts. Their passion and high constraints results in a highly innovative and creative approach in a subject that interests them that rivals and arguably surpasses many corporate attempts at analytical delivery.

Another example happens to be knowledge sharing and collaboration. Again the context is a game called Dungeons and Dragons Online. Similar to World of Warcraft, DDO as it is commonly called, appeals to a different type of gamer. While smaller in size than World of Warcraft, the DDO community is no less passionate than other gaming communities and equally innovative in their solutions. One of the best examples of sharing can be seen in the site DDOWiki.com. The paradigm is the same as Wikipedia only applied to a game setting. Here the community discusses game updates, class strategies, crafting, questing, items, and many other topics. It is often referenced by the community as a stable source of information related to many subjects within the game. As it's popularity grows, community members continue to expand and grow the content of the site. What is very remarkable happens to the diversity in age of the community members that consume and contribute. While it is indeed true that many younger adults are present, so are in fact many older individuals ranging in ages from their 40s to their 60s. Clearly the ability for a wide range of not only ages but experiences to rally around a common source that they are passionate about and to contribute their bits of knowledge and share it with a larger population is very insightful and inspiring.

These two examples are by no means the only ones around. In fact there are many examples of such innovation across the web. They are not only limited to games but to many other subjects as well.

I ended our conversation by pointing out that these communities are not being paid a salary to do what they do. They are doing it because they love it. They work in very constrained conditions. However what they produce is of high quality, leverages important social networking dimensions of velocity and engagement that allows them to grow, and demonstrates practical application of what many companies would consider advanced product development concepts and practices.

Hence in an age when companies are looking for different and transformational solutions to their problems, to expand into markets, and reach out to new consumers one has to be careful about drawing lines and boundaries about what is possible. Look in unconventional places and what one will find are numerous examples of solutions whose reliance on "non-traditional" lines of thought allow them to address their problems in whole new ways. It is the ability to learn from these examples and incorporate them into one's viewpoint that can make the difference in thinking and acting differently than other professionals when confronted with challenging problems.