Join us on Feb. 16-17, 2012 for our  Innovation Games® Class designed especially for consultants. 

Date: Feb. 16-17, 2012

Timing: 8:00 AM – 5:30 PM

Location: Mountain View, CA

Venue: Hilton Garden Inn, Mountain View

Cost: $500 per person *

Course Description

Modern product development practices, especially those that focus on innovative products and services, place great emphasis on having development teams work directly with customers. This is good news, for the foundation of innovation is a genuine understanding of your customers, and then using this understanding to create more effective ways of solving their problems.

This two-day, interactive course, based on the material in Luke Hohmann's book, tackles the challenge of developing customer understanding by providing you with a fresh perspective on how to use a variety of games with your customers to develop the understanding that forms the foundation of innovation. You’ll find that if you use them, you’ll come to understand what your customers really want. You’ll have fun doing it. Perhaps more importantly, they’ll have fun doing it. Armed with this understanding, you’ll be able to create the breakthrough, innovative products that are the foundation of lasting success.

This course covers in-person and online games and includes sections on how to market and sell the games, how to structure engagements, and how to manage clients.

Target Audience

• Product management consultants
• Agile software development consultants 
• Market research consultants

Benefits

Upon completing this course, participants will be able to integrate Innovation Games® into their existing service offerings, and sell Innovation Games services to new and existing clients. 

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
• How to sell and market the games

Theory of Instruction

The course is guided by a “learning by doing” model of education, based on the Enthiosys “Know-Do-Have” model of course design: 

• 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

Luke Hohmann is the Founder and CEO of The Innovation Games® Company. The author of three books, Luke’s playfully diverse background of life experiences has uniquely prepared him to design and produce serious games. Luke graduated magna cum laude with a B.S.E. in computer engineering and an M.S.E. in computer science and engineering from the University of Michigan. In addition to data structures and artificial intelligence, he studied cognitive psychology and organizational behavior. He is also a former National Junior Pairs Figure Skating Champion, as well as a certified aerobics instructor. In his spare time, Luke likes roughhousing with his four kids and his wife’s cooking. He also enjoys long runs in the Santa Cruz mountains to burn off his wife’s cooking.

(*This is not a public course. We reserve the right to reject anyone who is not a consultant.)