Startups - Ideas You Can Test

     In my last post, I provided a broad overview of how lean manufacturing principles are being applied to the process of innovation.  Lean thinking is ultimately about eliminating waste from a process and being as efficient as possible.  In the context of manufacturing eliminating waste means producing Toyota's with fewer and fewer defects.  In the early stages of a new business, eliminating waste means finding a sustainable business model quickly and efficiently.  All startups begin with an idea.  Here are a few examples:

• People will pay more for self-serve frozen yogurt sold by the ounce
• Let's make a digital version of a Sony Walkman that plays MP3s
• Let's make a digital Walkman, make it super simple to use and connect it to a digital music store
• We should gamify the job search process

These ideas may be good or bad or somewhere in between.  The goal of a lean startup is to quickly discard the bad ideas, optimize and scale the good ones, and figure out how to move the so-so ideas into the good or bad categories.

The FroYo Test

Lean Thinking and Entrepreneurship

With the release of Eric Ries' bestselling book The Lean Startup two months ago, the Lean Startup movement has received tremendous exposure in the business press and general media.

So, what are lean startups?

Lean startups use a scientific approach to creating and managing innovation and to get profitable products to customers faster.  The approach adapts concepts from lean manufacturing to reduce waste in the entrepreneurial management process and attempts to reduce the likelihood that a startup creates a product doesn't lead to a sustainable business (eg. a product that no one wants or that no one will pay for).  Of course, using this approach doesn't mean that lean startups won't experience product failures.  Rather, it allows entrepreneurs more opportunities to test their business hypotheses and learn from customers given the same amount of time and money.

Ries has five guiding principles for lean startups:

The Art of Lean Game Design

One of my favorite books on game design is The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell.  As I was re-reading this week, I was struck by how similar Schell's game design tenants are to the principles of The Lean Startup by Eric Ries.

In the forward to Game Design, Schell posits that the only way to become a game designer is to design games that people really like and that some people may view this statement as a Catch-22:  "If only game designers can design games, and you can only become a game designer by designing games, how can anyone get started?"  Fortunately, Schell also gives us a way out.  Be a game designer, and create a game.  Any game.  Act like a game design and become one.

"[But] simply jotting down your game idea isn't enough," writes Schell.  "You must build your game, play it yourself, and let others play it.  When it doesn't satisfy (and it won't), you must change it.  And change it.  And change it again, dozens of times, until you've created a game that people actually enjoy playing."

If you change the words "game" to "product", "game designer" to "entrepreneur" and "play" to "use", you have the essence of how a lean startup should go about validating their product hypothesis though continuous iterative learning and customer testing.

Build a Better Business with Games

 

Earlier this year, famed game designer Will Wright proclaimed that "we are in a Gambrian Explosion".  Like the Cambrian Explosion, which witnessed the rapid acceleration of biological evolution, we are now seeing the rapid evolution of games.  Games are showing up everywhere and everyone is becoming a gamer.

This rapid introduction of game thinking into every day life (aka. gamification) provides companies of all types with the opportunity to build a better business with gaming in mind.  Gamification can help companies improve their bottom lines by increasing user activation, engagement and retention.

1. Activation:  The best games make it easy for Newbies to get up to speed quickly.  Tutorials introduce key elements and goals without requiring users to digest lengthy instructions and documentation.  Novices are also give clear, easy-to-earn rewards.  In the parlance of user experience design, games a great at on-boarding users.
2. Engagement:  Games sustain user engagement by matching challenges and quests to a players current level of mastery.  As players enter the flow of a game, the level of difficulty increases and the player increases their skills.  Regular players also gain more power tools, status and personalization.
3. Retention:  Epic meaning and story arcs add interest and motivation and retains users over the long-term.  Master players can also be given exclusive access, activities, and unlocks.  And ultimately, players should be given an increasing sense of autonomy, mastery and purpose.

References:

Think of Social Games as Video Arcades: You Gotta Pay to Play

Last night, game design rock stars John Romero and Brenda Brathwaite held a Q&A session in front of a packed house at the Cogswell Polytechic's Dragons Den in Sunnyvale, California.  Romero is a game designer, self-taught programmer and artist who has published 97 games and is the father of the modern first person shoot genre.

Brathwaite is another game industry veteran with dozens of games to her credit including the Wizardry series and Dungeons & Dragons.  In November 2010 Romero and Brathwaite co-founded social game company Loot Drop.



Here are some of the tidbits that they revealed:

• The energy game mechanic in many social games is simply another version of arcade games that require players to drop quarters to continue playing.  
• Since gaming is an industry and not an art form, all game successful designers need find ways to get their players to pay them.  If you don't like a monetization mechanic, design a different one.
• Sound design is an important aspect of overall game design.  Sound designers and composers should attempt to make the sounds in their games distinctive.  Sounds and music can lend a unique signature to a game.
• The core second-to-second game mechanics are the most important elements of a game to get right.  Once this part of the game is solid, then other mechanics and longer story arcs can be layered on top.
• Mechanics are the message.  Distilled to their essence, games are defined by a structured set of rules. 
• Tidiness theory.  The natural human design to keep things tidy and organized can be expressed in a variety of game mechanics.  For example, PacMan can be seen as a game about cleaning dot from a maze.  Other games encourage players to clear each level.

If you'd like to find out more about Romero and Brathwaite you can check out Planet Romero and Brathwaite's Applied Game Design blog.

[The sponsors of the event said that they'd post a video of the entire session.  I'll post a link to it once it's available.]

The Gamification Consulting Boom of 2012

     Most of the buzz these days is around the raft new gamification start-ups and a smaller number of established players. These companies are the ones who are raising capital and building the products and platforms that will sustain this fast growing market (see my previous post on Enterprise Gamification Going Mainstream).  But professional services is one of the overlooked parts of the gamification ecosystem, and as the industry heats up, we should expect consulting to be the next big growth area.

     We've seen this all before in the enterprise space. Take a look any out-of-the-box product built over the last 20 years (ERP systems, document management solutions, SaaS CRM applications, or the current crop of cloud-based services). While the companies behind these products aspired to provide world-class self-service platforms, inevitably only the smallest companies with the most vanilla implementations have been successful on their own.

     There is no reason to think that Gamification will be any different. As Kris Duggan, CEO of gamification company Badgeville, recently told the Wall Street Journal, "adding gamification to the workplace drives performance but it doesn't make up for bad management. If you are a bad manager, gamification won't help you."

     The Journal article went on to say, "Companies need to make sure that the games are designed to actually reward desired behaviors and are not just doling out meaningless awards or badges.  Firms also need to make sure that friendly competition doesn't get out of hand, fostering animosity among employees."

     In other words, there's a right way to do gamification and there's a wrong way.

Enterprise Gamification Goes Mainstream

Gamification of the enterprise has officially gone mainstream with the October 10, 2011 coverage of the industry in the Wall Street Journal.  This spring Forbes Magazine featured an article on how enterprise application giant SAP is applying game thinking to their offerings in order to create a more engaging experience for their users.

SAP's Lead-in-One iPad App

Companies from IBM and Agilent to Goodrich and Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu are introducing game mechanics into the workplace to make everyday tasks like training, data entry, and brainstorming more fun.  Employees boost their egos by earning badges and engage in friendly competitions with their colleagues.  Companies can improve employee health and wellness and drive down healthcare costs by implementing fitness competitions or spur new product development with innovation tournaments.

Job Slayer Rules: How to Gamify Job Hunting

     In my last post, I wrote about how the time was right for gamifying job hunting and how two fellow bloggers, Brooke Allen and Jon Loomer, had recent written about the subject in separate posts.  Even before I wrote that post, I had been thinking a lot about what the essence of a Job Slaying game should be.

    My goal is to create a game that is both supportive and transformative.  The game would need to support the job hunting process as well as transform the way people think about jobs and work.  (Note that the game I've designed is heavily influenced by the rules for Jane McGonigal's game SuperBetter as published in her blog and Brooke Allen's No Shortage of Work philosophy.  I have also gotten valuable insights from Job Slayers, Jon Loomer, Dylan Holmes among others.)  With that said, here we go.

     At its core, the game should emphasize the following five game mechanics:

     1.) Recruiting allies.  Having a strong social support network will help bolster Job Slayers as they pursue their quest and face inevitable set backs.  Therefore, folks who are out of work first and foremost need to identify a go-to team of people who can help then track their progress and keep on track, boost morale, and think outside the box about what they want out of their next jobs and how to get it. 

Superbetter for Job Slayers

Author and game designer Jane McGonigal recently announced the beta release of SuperBetter, a gaming platform designed to help people achieve their health goals — or recover from an illness or injury — by increasing personal resilience.  This site developed out of McGonigal's real world experience with recovering from a Mild Traumatic Brain Injury in 2009.  In addition to traditional game mechanics, SuperBetter features insights into the latest scientific and clinical research.

With serious games like SuperBetter taking off and unemployment at post-Depression highs, what time would be better than now to gamify the job hunting process.  Two of my friends, quite independently, have been doing a lot of thinking about this.

A casualty of the ailing economy, digital marketing strategist Jon Loomer recent launched a social media game called #GetLoomerAJob.  In this game, friends can earn points by publicizing Loomer's job search on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, or by making introductions.  The person who gets Loomer a job and the person who helps out the most are eligible for some cool prizes including a day donated to the winner or company/charity of his or her choice.  Whether or not Loomer lands a job thru this game, Loomer displays his digital marketing chops in spades.  Total creative brilliance!

Brooke Allen, the creator of No Shortage of Work (a blog dedicated to the proposition that there is NEVER a shortage of work, and that there are always ways we can collaborate to accomplish things, and to learn from each other), approached this problem from point of view of making it fun to learning new skills and hunt for a job.  In a recent post, Allen discusses how "Jobsville" can help put America back to work with gamification expert, Gabe Zicherman.

What do you think?  What would get you to play the Job Hunting game?

Website Relaunched

I am proud to announce the relaunch of kennethjhong.com.  The old site was really two separate blogs (one for personal musings and the other for company-related announcements) and was barely held together by a common menu bar.

The launch of the new website coincides with the creation of Harvada Consulting, a private consulting business focused on helping company founders and senior executives with product visioning and strategy.  This business is an extension of what I've been doing informally for several years.

Fig 1. New website home page

Creating Social Websites

Making your Corporate Website Relevant A great presentation by Jeremiah Owyang discussing a road map for social integration on corporate websites.

Understanding Social Plugins
Official Facebook video explaining how social plug-in are meant to add social content to websites.

Counterpoints & Cautions: the Use and Abuse of Game Mechanics

My last post covered how game mechanics are being used inside [video and social] games and in real world applications and why the use of game mechanics is good and engaging.

In this post, I look at what's being said about the dark side of gamification.  The following articles warning against the gamification of our world and the need, at a minimum, for more thoughtful application of game mechanics than the shameless application of manipulative and meaningless badges or achievements that we currently see in many places (including Social Games).

• Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges | ZDNet 
• GDC: Hecker's Nightmare Scenario - A Future Of Rewarding Players For Dull Tasks | Gamasutra
• GDC Presentation: Achievements Considered Harmful? | chrishecker.com (Video and Notes)

See my summaries and take aways after the jump:

Some Great Reading on Game Mechanics and Gamification

There have been a slew of great articles that have come out over the last few days on the application of game mechanics and user engagement.

• On a Hunt for What Makes Gamers Keep Gaming | New York Times
• Call of Duty Black Ops Multiplayer Blows Away Other Games on Engagement | Games Beat
• GDC China: Zynga's Tian On The Craft Of Social Games | Gamasutra
• The Game/Tech Industry's Tea Party | Huffington Post

Read my summaries and take aways after the jump.

Will 2011 be the Year that Games Take Over the World?

The enormous size the game industry and the recent evolution of social games has made games and game mechanics ever more present in our daily lives.  In this environment, an enormous opportunity exists for individuals, companies, and government to harness the motivating power of game mechanics to increase internal productivity, to engage constituents more deeply, and to drive consumer behavior.

The following presentations from 2010 underline how game mechanics are appearing everywhere and what we have to look forward to.

• Design Outside the Box (by Jesse Schell, DICE Summit February 18, 2010)
• Gaming can make a better world (by Jane McGonigal, TED 2010, February 2010)
• Building the game layer on top of the world (by Seth Priebatsch, TEDxBoston, July 2010)

Schell sees a world in which pervasive gaming and reward systems will permeate our lives.  McGonigal envisions a world where we harness the collaborative problem solving skills of gamers to solve some of the world most urgent problems.

Will 2011 be the looked back on as the year when the gamification of our world took a big leap forward?  A lot of people are trying to make that happen.

Social & Online Gaming Summit Highlights -- GDC 2010

Here are my three favorite presentations from this year's Social & Online Gaming Summit at the Game Developers Conference.

• Social Gaming in China by James Gwertzman
• Metagame Design by Amy Jo Kim
• State of the Social Gaming Industry by Justin Smith

See the slide shares after the jump: 

Update March 1, 2010: Future Posts and a few links

So far my posts have focused on using social media and using social networks for networking. These are two areas that I've devoted a lot of thought to lately. And this post is no exception.

One of the other areas that I think about is metrics, and I've just been looking at three sites that provide metrics on the level of influence or impact of users on Twitter. Good stuff.

Twitter Grader
Twitalyzer
TweetLevel

I hope to publish an article soon on another big interest of mine, branded gaming.

Using LinkedIn to Build Your Network and Market Your Business

Just found this great article by Lewis Howes founder of SportsNetworker.com.

Top 5 Ways to Market Your Business with LinkedIn

Published February 22, 2010

LinkedIn is the most powerful social networking site to help you grow your business.  It makes Twitter, Facebook and YouTube seem like social networking sites for kids.

If you want to hang with the big players—a place where connections are made, leads are generated, and deals go down—then you need to spend more of your time on LinkedIn.

....

#1: Use LinkedIn Groups & Receive Tons of New Leads Daily

Creating a LinkedIn group gives you the ability to generate an amazing number of leads from high-end decision makers.

#2: Ask Questions & Build Your Credibility

I’ve asked a number of questions using LinkedIn Answers because it’s a great way to get the answers you need from some of the top experts in the world.  [When answering questions] research the person who asked the question, and find a way to tie in a personal response with something from their LinkedIn profile.

#3: Create Powerful Events

Hosting an event is a great way to build your business (see events under the ‘More…’ news in the LinkedIn navigation bar). LinkedIn has an events platform that allows you to target thousands of professionals for free.

#4: Run an Advanced Search in Your Target Market

It’s so easy to generate leads from LinkedIn. The advanced search function helps you get in touch with the exact people you’re going after.

#5: Send Personal Messages

The best way to drop any walls—and give yourself the best chance of making a sale—is to connect with someone on as many personal levels as possible. Look at their profile, find out which companies they’ve worked for in the past, which school they attended, what groups they’re in, listed hobbies and who your mutual connections are.

See the Lewis' full blog post a lot of other great tips:

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/top-5-ways-to-market-your-business-with-linkedin/

Social Media: A Beginners Guide

A personal look at social networking

You are a business executive and have a well establish network of friends, colleagues and associates. Do you really need to engage with online social networks like like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, digg, de.li.cious to name just a few?

I've been experimenting with social networks for the last 18 months, and can say that business professionals should absolutely take advantage of immediacy and network building capabilities of social media. Do you need to run your life around these networks? Absolutely not.

Why use social networks?
Social networks allows us to connect and communicate with all of the people in our network much faster and efficiently that we could have in the past.  These networks also allow you to easily create connections by searching through friends-of-friends-of-friends to find long-lost acquaintances or new people with common interests. Depending on the network, you may also be able to connect with or follow the luminaries and thought leaders in any areas of interest regardless of whether or not you have a personal connection.

The purpose of networking is to market your business, find prospects, land jobs, learn something new, solve problems or develop personal friendships. Social media provides one more source of connections in additional to traditional venues like conferences, professional associations, career fairs, cocktail parties, and trade shows.

Like all forms of networking, effective online social networking is all about meeting people, exchanging information and figuring out if you can help each other out.

In order to be an effective social networker, you need to understand your target networks and have a communication strategy.

How should I use social networks?
If you ask a dozen people about how they use social networks, you are like to get a dozen different answers. Some will say that they only use it to broadcast marketing messages and PR. Others will use it only for personal communications with friends. While others will only use it for gathering information. The bottom line is that social networks are a very flexible medium. They are what you make of them.

That being said, you will be best served if you use the medium with a purpose. If you are using it for everything than you are using it for nothing. This brings me to my next point.

What are the differences between social networks and what communication strategies should I use?
With the interoperability of messaging between different social networks, it is very easy to post an update on Twitter and have that message automatically posted to your LinkedIn and Facebook status.

Just because you can do this, should you? Probably not. Your high school and college friends on Facebook don't want to be spammed with messages about your business activities. Just as your business associates don't wanted to be spammed with messages about the quality of the food at the new sushi restaurant you went to on Friday night.

Personally, I use each social network for a different purpose. I use LinkedIn to maintain business connections, to research companies and contacts, and to recruit new employees.

I use Facebook mainly for personal relationships. To the extent that I have FB friends who are colleagues, I restrict what they can see about me and I never post anything that I wouldn't want my boss or my mom to read. By the same virtue, FB also allows you to see into to the lives of colleagues to a much greater extent that normal office interactions would typically provide. In those cases, you need to respect the privacy of your workmates and be careful not to bring what you see on Facebook back into the office or become overly friendly on Facebook.

I use Twitter in four distinct ways:

• To scan for breaking news. All of the major news organizations use twitter to send out links to their top stories and breaking news. I also follow thought leaders, experts and bloggers in my industry.
• To research specific topics by search for what people are saying and what information sources they're linking to
• To develop relationships with a community of people who care about the same things that I do
• To let that community know what I'm doing and thinking, and share ideas and links that matter

Twitter isn't the only place to go to for the first two items, but it's one of the first that I go to.

Resources
The “Must-Have” Tool Kit of Social Media Citizen
Twitter Power Tips Part 1
Twitter Power Tips Part 2
Social Media Today -- A site dedicated to following, thinking about and discussing social media
Etiquette for the Social Networking Age -- Knowledge@Wharton article highlighting how the personas we share with family, friends and colleagues can blur on social networks
How to Drive Traffic with Twitter

And remember, if you maintain a professional tone throughout, there are very few social networking faux pas that can't be corrected.

So, jump into social networking and have fun.