Join us on March 22-23, 2012 for our Innovation Games® for Customer Understanding course.

Date: March 22-23, 2012

Timing: 8:00 AM – 5:30 PM

Location: Mountain View, CA

Venue: Hilton Garden Inn, 840 E. El Camino Real, Mountain View, CA 94040

Course Description

Long before gamification, gamestorming and serious games became the latest buzz words, Luke Hohmann and his team were using a variety of serious games, Innovation Games®, to help companies like SAP, Qualcomm, Cisco, Reed Elsevier and Yahoo! build breakthrough products & services. These games (originally outlined in Luke's groundbreaking book, Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products through Collaborative Play) enable you to work directly with your customers, eliciting unique insight into what they truly want from your product or service.

This two-day courses will teach you how to:

• Discover what customers don't like about your offerings
  
• Uncover unspoken needs & breakthrough opportunities
  
• Understand where your offerings fit into your customers' operations
  
• Clarify exactly how & when customers will use your product or service
  
• Deliver the right new features & make better strategy decisions
  
• Increase empathy for the customers' experience within your organization
  
• Improve the effectiveness of the sales & service organizations
  
• Identify your most effective marketing messages and sellable features

Target Audience

• Product managers/directors
• Marketing managers 
• Market research professionals
• Executive Management
• Agile Coaches/Team Leads
• Software engineers/developers/architects
  
• Anyone interested in driving more successful, customer-focused product development
  

Benefits

Upon completing this course, participants will be able to use Innovation Games® in their Voice of the Customer, new product development and ongoing product development processes to collaboratively identify, shape and prioritize breakthrough products and services.

Content Outline

• Discussion of Innovation Games and Market Research
• High-level planning, playing and post-processing Innovation Games
• Detailed planning, playing and post-processing the results of several case studies that enable participants to experience all phases of Innovation Games
• Review and shared discussion; helping participants plan their adoption of these techniques
• Facilitation and presentation skills

Target Audience

• Product managers/directors
• Marketing managers 
• Market research professionals
• Executive Management
• Agile Coaches/Team Leads
• Software engineers/developers/architects
  
• Anyone interested in driving more successful, customer-focused product development

Benefits

Upon completing this course, participants will be able to use Innovation Games® in their Voice of the Customer, new product development and ongoing product development processes to collaboratively identify, shape and prioritize breakthrough products and services.

Content Outline

• Discussion of Innovation Games and Market Research
• High-level planning, playing and post-processing Innovation Games
• Detailed planning, playing and post-processing the results of several case studies that enable participants to experience all phases of Innovation Games
• Review and shared discussion; helping participants plan their adoption of these techniques
• Facilitation and presentation skills

Theory of Instruction

The course is guided by a “learning by doing” model of education: 

• What participants will know after taking the class.
• What participants will do during the seminar to reinforce key concepts.
• What participants will have after the seminar to promote further practice and study.

Prerequisites

Although not strictly required, it is helpful if participants read the book Innovation Games®: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play before the course.

Materials

• Course Presentation
• A variety of handouts used to stimulate thinking and apply the materials
• Case studies

Instructor

Deb Colden is an independent strategy consultant and executive coach and a veteran of the high tech industry with extensive experience in management and cross-organizational leadership roles. Described by clients a “high-energy, thought-provoking, actionable and empowering,” Deb specializes in helping leaders and teams achieve aggressive goals in less time and with greater focus. She is known for her pragmatic, business and customer-focused approach and frequently uses Innovation Games® with her own clients.