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Successful innovation demands more than a good strategic plan; it requires creative improvisation. Much of the "serious play" that leads to breakthrough innovations is increasingly linked to experiments with models, prototypes, and simulations. As digital technology makes prototyping more cost-effective, serious play will soon lie at the heart of all innovation strategies, influencing how businesses define themselves and their markets. Author Michael Schrage is one of today's most widely recognized experts on the relationship between technology and work. In Serious Play, Schrage argues that the real value in building models comes less from the help they offer with troubleshooting and problem solving than from the insights they reveal about the organization itself. Technological models can actually change us--improving the way we communicate, collaborate, learn, and innovate. With real-world examples and engaging anecdotes, Schrage shows how companies such as Disney, Microsoft, Boeing, IDEO, and DaimlerChrysler use serious play with modeling technologies to facilitate the collaborative interactions that lead to innovation. A user's guide included with the book helps readers apply many of the innovation practices profiled throughout. A landmark book by one of the most perceptive voices in the field of innovation.
- Sales Rank: #137067 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Harvard Business School
- Published on: 1999-12-10
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.25" h x 6.25" w x 1.00" l, 1.23 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 272 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
Amazon.com Review
Recall the old saying about all work and no play making Jack a dull boy? World-class companies today need play--serious play--if they want to make truly innovative products, argues Michael Schrage, an MIT Media Lab fellow and Fortune magazine columnist. In Serious Play he writes, "When talented innovators innovate, you don't listen to the specs they quote. You look at the models they've created." Whether it's a spreadsheet that tests a new financial model or a foam prototype of a calculator, what interests Schrage is not the model itself, but the behavior that play--be it modeling, prototyping, or simulation--inspires.
Schrage examines the approaches to successful prototyping at companies such as AT&T, Boeing, Microsoft, and DaimlerChrysler and describes the kind of culture that's needed for encouraging innovation. In the last chapter, he lays out the 10 rules of serious play, including: Be willing to fail early and often; know when the costs outweigh the benefits; know who wins and who loses from an innovation; build a prototype that engages customers, vendors, and colleagues; create markets around prototypes; and simulate the customer experience. Well-written and inspiring, Serious Play, is a first-rate user's guide for managers, project leaders, and other innovators. --Dan Ring
From Booklist
At such firms as Walt Disney, Microsoft, 3M, Sony, and Hewlitt-Packard, serious play is serious work. Schrage, a research associate at MIT Media Lab and columnist for Fortune, sets out to explore "serious play," which he defines as creative improvisation in corporations. Serious play is taking place worldwide, and it uses such "toys" as models, simulations, and prototypes. With the development of sophisticated technology, the distinction among these three toys has blurred, and they all are used as an effort to recreate some aspect of reality that matters; their real value is the insight they provide an organization. The irony of innovation in any field, especially the most competitive, is that you can't be a serious innovator unless you are willing to play--which means seriously investing in the challenge of confronting the uncertainties that future markets will bring by rigorously questioning and revising the rules. This is a "must read" book. Mary Whaley
Review
In the late 1970s, a young Harvard Business School student figured there had to be a better way to crunch mergers-and-acquisitions numbers than manually recalculating them on printed ledger sheets. The grad student was Dan Bricklin, and his quest for a better way led to the creation of VisiCalc, the first electronic spreadsheet. Within five years, all Harvard MBA students used spreadsheet software.
Within a decade, low-cost spreadsheets had launched what Michael Schrage, author and codirector of the MIT Media Lab's eMarkets Initiative, calls "the largest and most significant experiment in rapid prototyping and simulation in the history of business." According to Schrage, it also helped kick off the personal-computer era, spawned the mergers-and-acquisitions boom of the late 1980s and made Michael Milken and legions of Wall Street analysts and traders rich.
Spreadsheets are one example of the simulations, prototypes and models that fill Schrage's newest work, Serious Play. Because spreadsheet software is so well known, Schrage devotes an entire chapter to it to illustrate his core idea: that a company dominates its industry when it designs prototypes quickly and frequently, and when it uses its innovations to continually transform itself and its relationships with customers and suppliers. Microsoft, Boeing, Royal Dutch/Shell, Disney and Netscape all are masters of what Schrage calls "rapid prototyping."
If you crack open Serious Play thinking you'll get a breezy read, you'll be disappointed. Schrage's writing is intellectually dense, though not impenetrable. He defines play as "improvising with the unanticipated in ways that create new value." Companies play when they run simulations to test what changing the shape of a widget will do to the weight of an automobile, or when they model what lowering the price of software will do to sales.
Schrage argues that while prototypes and simulations are valuable in supporting an organization's existing behaviors, they're more valuable when they turn up surprises. After airline industry deregulation, for example, NASA investigated pilot fatigue. Instead of finding that well-rested pilots flew better, researchers were surprised by simulations that showed pilots who'd worked together several shifts in a row responded better under stressful flight conditions than fresh crews.
Prototypes aren't immune to failure. Companies can shoot themselves in the foot by creating elaborate prototypes then ignoring what they've learned. In a classic example from the late 1960s, Sun Oil built an incredibly sophisticated corporate financial model, but it was so complicated managers never used it. Even worse, companies that fail to question the underlying assumptions of their prototypes wind up with products no one will buy.
How does Schrage relate his theories to the Internet Economy? Unfortunately, he leaves it up to them to draw their own conclusions. However, it's not hard to see Schrage's culture of rapid prototyping happening all over the Web. The Web has become the world's biggest prototype laboratory, with companies slapping on features as quickly as possible to gauge consumer reaction, test revenue models and even figure out which business they should be in. [See Schrage's Jan. 31 column "(Serious) Playtime."]
It's also easy to see how the Web has led to what Schrage calls prototype "Christmas trees," products that designers keep adding features to because they can, not because customers want them.
Schrage closes with a few pointers that dot-com companies would be wise to follow, especially if they don't have cultures that support formal modeling or simulation. Before jumping into a project, understand who the beneficiaries of prototypes or models are: customers, the marketing department or the CEO? Don't be afraid to fail. Outline how prototypes will be integrated into commercial products. Above all, play. This is serious advice from a master on the subject. -- From The Industry Standard
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Knowing your process performance is important
By James William Martin
I highly recommend this book to anyone including busy executives. It is a very interesting and non-technical discussion of why organizations should embrace process quantification. It's been said that if a person can quantify their judgments; then they know what they are talking about. Too many people make judgments about their systems without having any understanding of how they operate since they have not done a careful study of process variables, their transformative mechanisms and the system's outputs. This is true regardless if the type of system. The authors discuss how some major organizations use models and simulation to understand and improve their processes to create a deeper understanding of how they operate.
37 of 39 people found the following review helpful.
This book changed how I think about simulation
By Michael B.
This is one of the best books on simulation that I've read. Through many intriguing examples, Serious Play shows how simulation can accelerate and improve decision-making. The book explains how simulation can be a critical tool for strategic planning. Schrage frames simulation as an inclusive, primary business activity, instead of something exclusive, performed by experts in a back office.
I especially liked Schrage's recognition of spreadsheets as a simulation tool. In discussions on simulation, spreadsheets are usually ignored because they are seen as unsophisticated. Schrage shows how spreadsheet simulations made many of the financial innovations of the 80s and early 90s possible.
In addition to convincing readers that simulations are valuable, Schrage does a good job of introducing readers to how simulations can be implemented in business. The chapters near the end of the book on measuring the ROI of simulations and his brief user's guide provide some useful tools for those interested in using simulations and prototypes to improve decision-making.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful.
Three years on, still a great book
By Andy Orrock
Here's the best review I can give Michael Schrage's "Serious Play": Three years on, it's consistently the first book I pull out of my bookshelf when I'm looking for ideas for presentations, thoughts on introducing new products or services, etc. His commentary on "mean-time-to-payback" is something that will stick with you for years. It's brilliant stuff, written in clear, concise terms. And, surprisingly, very little of it is dated. Unlike many books from that era, there's no .com or Enron fixation for the author to be embarrassed about. Schrage's examples are pulled from health care technology, animation, theater...in short, an eye-opening spectrum of ideas. I consider "Serious Play" one of my best purchases ever.
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