iMedia

Serious games manufacture great experiences

In this brief iMedia Kentucky interview, game designer Jane McGonigal describes the explosion of opportunities in games designed and carried out in real life, not on-screen.

Like smokestacks of another age, such games signal the 21st production of another valuable resource, good experiences. Experience design is valuable to schools, manufacturing, health care, tourism and travel or any industry, really, where happy clients and customers are needed.

Collaborating via games can also help develop new scenarios and contribute in general to the knowing enterprise. And, finally, software derived from good game design, as she points out, is used in businesses to improve teamwork.

Jane McGonigal recently spoke a the 2008 IdeaFestival in Louisville, where she described alternate reality games as "happiness engines".

Running in Place

The Lane Report's recent article, Pep Rally for Boldness, goes to the heart of why creativity and innovation matter to Kentucky. The commonwealth simply can't afford to accept the status quo and hope to keep pace.

This figure is staggering:

At the current incremental rate of growth, the state will catch up to the national average household income in 157 years. Small improvements will only allow us to keep running in place. 

"Culturesmithing:" Your world, better

[Cross-posted from the IdeaFestival web log] Game designer and futurist Jane McGonigal, who spoke meaningfully about games as "happiness engines" and the need to create, rather than predict the future during her presentation at the IdeaFestival in September, lists some of her favorite ideas for saving the world in the alternative reality game Superstruct, currently underway.

Celebratory taxonomy? Culturesmithing?

Here's an old idea that may have new relevance: fasting.

Wikipedia: alternative reality games, game theory

"War for Talent" gets Graphic

Keith Bendis, who was the graphic facilitator for Idea Kentucky, has made his work available. He entitled this image the "War for Talent."

The "Big Idea Slam," "Off the Yellow Brick Road" and "Kentucky, the Brand" images are also available if you're interested in a visual recap of the day's events.

Responding to disruptive change

To follow up on an earlier post, I ran across this article from Harvard Business School entitled "Disruptive Change: When Trying Harder is Part of the Problem." The full article will cost you, but the authors, Harvard Business School professors Clark Gilbert and Joseph L. Bower, answered some questions in this HBS Working Knowledge piece about how organizational leaders ought to frame responses to "disruptive" challenges.

This abstract also captures the core ideas.

Wayne

Wikipedia: Disruptive Change