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.

The Business of Free - An Experience Using Online Gaming

Often times many of the professionals and leaders I meet do not really understand the premise of building value by giving away things such as products or services for free. They cite past failures, the overall costs of what they are giving away vs. the intangibles of valuation, or any number of other reasons.

I used to be an avid online gamer running a large in-game organization called a guild. Now in many ways running a guild is like running a company. There was an organization structure which was pretty flat, leader, leadership council, veterans and members. The guild was pretty large, about 150 people at it's peak who were spread out across the globe representing the United States (all time zones), many countries in Europe such as England, France, Scotland, Italy, in addition to other countries like New Zealand and Australia. We all coordinated our communication via in-game chats and voice-over-ip chat clients.

Guilds in online games also share another dimension with businesses in that they want to grow and expand. Not only membership which is fine, but in terms of placing themselves in a winning position within the confines of the game they play. They want to be among the top earners, have a great reputation towards their target market, and above all have fun doing so. After all gamers actually pay money in addition to spending time in these worlds.

One key practice and belief that I used for our guild happened to be the idea of giving back to the community of gamers. This meant a doing a few things:

• Volunteer 8 hours a week to help those in the gaming world with quests, new items or charitable donations. We all remembered what it meant to start from scratch or face ingame hardships. So by helping others we could help ease some of these problems others were facing. This translated into positive reputations with other guilds offering their services to assist in volunteer events whether it be other items, coin donations, or time from their members.
• Donate items or coins to other players. When guild members could do so, they would devote a small portion of their proceeds from their time in the guild to the guild banks. A portion of these would be used to make donations back to the community or give items to those in the game. This again increased the reputation of the guild within the game and increased interest in guild events which helped boost overall guild revenue and morale.
• Being a guide/teacher. Another way the guild gave back was to mentor or guide groups of lower level players for a period of time, such as growing from one level to another, getting through a certain adventure, or teaching them how to progress in their ingame profession/class. Newer players loved the experience since it helped them learn things far more quickly than would have normally been achieved and veterans increased their teaching skills and in many cases created bonds with newer players that lasted outside of the game. Overall guild members became more invested in the guild and with what it stood for resulting in increased performance and participation.

These practices not only increased the pride members had in the guild and what it was doing, it had tangible effects on how the guild operated within the game. We recruited top notch talent who would help with some of the most difficult adventures in the game and bring us through it successfully. Guild income increased not only due to membership size, but because of our participation in the world through successfully completion of key adventure objects and increased donations from the gaming community to our guild.

Another big achievement was that our guild members learned a lot about each other in real life. We were of varied backgrounds, economic groups and social levels yet worked really well without many of us having seen each other. One person was a professional lawyer offering legal advice and counsel to those who needed it. Another person was a counselor helping individuals with tough life challenges. Gamers within the guild and outside the guild talked about how much they learned both personally and professionally such as how to participate with virtual teams that they had never seen face-to-face.

In this setting not only had my goal of giving away things for free helped our guild, but the individuals and gaming community that had participated as well.

The inability to see how things can work from different perspectives is one of the greatest weaknesses of many technical professionals. This is mostly due to an age old thinking that being an "expert" means that being wrong or perceived as not the top of the game is a critical flaw. In fact what instead tell professionals the greatest weakness is not admitting your own. There are many millions of people participating in online games as an example whether they be first person shooters or gaming worlds. The skills these individuals are learning, applying and mastering give such as virtual collaboration both in real time and offline interactions are far superior in many cases to many professionals I have seen in the workplace.

Many business concepts such as doing things for free can be tremendously insightful and revealing in these online games. It is by no means the only way. However those professionals that do not explore alternative views to concepts that have worked in my opinion not only limit their careers but will ultimately end them as they find themselves replaced by individuals better equipped to handle different situations.

Virtualized Teams - Applying Game Theory to the Workplace

One of the greatest challenges that I have seen companies and professionals face time and again is the dreaded geographically distributed or virtualized team. Issues can range from a sense of disconnect between individuals and groups, lack of involvement, and missed deliverables due to miscommunication of requirements. Depending on how long and deep these issues are they can create higher levels of dissatisfaction about overall effectiveness leading to dismissal or voluntary resignations.

When one objectively describes a virtualized team it is usually described as a situation in which one or many individuals are working together collaboratively towards a common goal or deliverable. While tremendously difficult to achieve for many corporations, there are in fact a vast number of people that actually have successful experiences outside of companies; most notably in gaming. The first sorts of games that come to mind are team games where the objectives are fairly simple such as first-person shooters such as Halo where real-time reflexes and interaction are key. However a gaming genre far more applicable to business situations would in fact be what are called Massively Multiplayer Online games or MMOs. These games are capable of allowing individuals from vastly different geographic regions to participate in fairly complex game and social interactions in real time or even in the cases of turn-based MMOs such as Mafia or Vampire. In some of the largest games hundreds of thousands if not millions of people participate not as part of a job requirement but rather because they enjoy it. Enjoy it enough to pay money.

Many of the success factors that create engagement in these games are actually common to successful corporate virtualized teams. Yet in spite of having individuals willing and able to engage in high levels of virtual participation for hours on end, most companies have failed to consistently tap into this experience. From my years of working and engaging in both corporate virtualized teams and games such as MMOs here are some of the key factors:

• Clearly explained and understood rules for the virtualized experience. For games and companies rules are absolutely necessary. They help get everyone on the same page, help everyone involved to understand what is expected, and the requirements necessary to participate. This can range from voice discussions, to chats, and many more. Any virtualized team without clear rules is going to spend a lot of time figuring it out that may in fact not align with business expectations.
• Guild or group association. In MMOs there is a concept of a guild or organization who has a stated mission, purpose and general principles of operation on how it interacts in a virtual setting. This for companies is the equivalent to a group charter. It is the common understanding of what the members who are working together are working toward. It also helps virtual participants to easily be recognized and identify themselves. Just like the real world, virtual participants take their association with these guilds very seriously. A guild's reputation immediately extends to it's members once they join. If a guild has a good reputation, people want to come and join. If a guild has a bad reputation, people do not want to. This basic mechanism is the same for groups and companies. If the general feeling is that the group a professional is joining is of a dubious nature they will be highly suspicious and resistant.
• Roles and duties. In all games there are the concepts of classes or professions that are at a conceptual level understood by all participants. Similar to titles within an organization these easily identify what part the virtualized team member plays. However in such cases their roles and expected duties must be well communicated. For example in MMOs if one person is say an expert healer the immediate assumption is that the person will be helping the group. However it may be the case that the group leader would like to have one healer tend to the group's wounds primarily while the other concentrates on a particular individual. Again what duties are performed are based on the needs of the group for specific instances. Since you are not necessarily face-to-face it helps to have these defined on a common page that all virtualized members have access to. 
• Communicate. Someone who just runs around either not typing into chat or not using voice communications is quickly removed from groups as not being a team member or left out of group interactions. This is the same behavior that is seen in virtualized teams. If members do not actively communicate, they quickly find themselves isolated and doing very little or being asked to do things that they had no idea were coming their way. As part of any virtualized team, it is absolutely critical that it is explained that a certain level of communication is absolutely necessary for success. Whether it be via email, chat, voice communications or whatever, a virtual team lives on consistent communication.
• Engage. Communication is not the only criteria for success. Virtual participants are expected to engage with their team on issues, problems, goals and work as an active member. This also has to be communicated with appropriate expectations such that everyone knows what is expected. Otherwise people will do what they think is appropriate. This can be as simple as setting the expectation that as new project topics appear on a forum, that team members post at least 1 thought about the project (good/bad/indifferent) within 48 hrs. Any member that does not do so should provide a very good and acceptable reason why they could not. 
• Virtual Leadership. Participants expect that their leaders will be equally if not more more responsible or active in their virtual interactions. This is where games differ significantly from many companies and is actually what I consider a significant risk area. In games leaders take their responsibilities very seriously. In fact having worked in that role in an MMO for over 2 years with a guild of over 200 members I can compare that experience to being like a director of a 200 person division. The expectation is that there is a chain of command with the leader appointing responsible and respected delegates. I managed expectations of communication but also made an effort to meet with virtually everyone in my guild whether they had been there 1 day or since the beginning. I explained, managed and enforced guild conduct. It was not always pleasant but it needed to be done. I was also expected to have a vision for the guild and it's members and insured that everyone was moving in that direction. This is no different than in real world leadership. Visibility and connection are tremendously important. The benefit of virtualized communication is that it can help a leader reach out to many more members than can be done physically. It is when a leader delegates the "leadership" aspects to a virtual leader that things change. Virtual team members feel more connection to people that they deal with, not people they report to and hardly see. Many companies miss this vital point. If their organizational leader is NOT making the effort to interact with a virtual team, then they have a very negative view of that leader. Someone that engages the virtual team effectively as the leader, is the leader. No ifs, no ands, no buts. If a leader is going to create and cultivate virtual teams, they need to make the time to participate. Just like any conference call or team meeting, a leader needs to show up in their virtual space and engage.

There are a number of other areas that I can mention but these are some of the chief ones. All virtualized teams want and crave a sense of community and belonging. They want to know that they are valued, recognized and can participate. In almost all companies that I see their ability to handle virtualized teams is fairly rudimentary. They almost classically fall into physical habits. That is to say they will deal with people when they see them face-to-face and interact with them daily. Virtual teams are almost an afterthought. That view is easily picked up by members of a virtual team who usually respond by distancing themselves and refusing to participate. This creates disruptions in the form of missed deadlines, poor deliverable quality, and stress among all members to name a few.

Companies need to place more emphasis on not only establishing good virtual team practices and behaviors with collaborative tools, but evolve them as the group grows and matures. What worked 5 years ago may no longer be effectively today. Constant evolution and change is key.

In the end when I am inevitably confronted about virtualized teams by companies I always counter with the observation that their children or other individuals with not a lot of years of business experience, no technical expertise, and in many cases no formalized training are capable of conducting themselves in vast virtualized teams across the globe everyday willingly and are not only effective but enjoying themselves. If the technology and practices have come so far that a 14 year old can participate well among adults, it is not that it cannot work, it is the company is not making the effort to succeed. And if a company is not making any effort to follow current trends of their customers and employees, is it no wonder they are suffering heavy losses in a recession.