Serious Play: How the World's Best Companies Simulate to Innovate

Group Facilitation, Spring 2003 by Lesko, John

"Serious Play is about serious work: how the world's leading companies model, prototype and simulate to innovate. Increasingly, prototypes are the key platforms and models are the core media for managing risk and creating value. They allow for cost-effective creativity, encourage profitable improvisation, and inspire organizations to collaborate in unexpected ways. Serious Play is a crisply written handbook for product, process, and project leaders who are determined to manage their innovation initiatives successfully."

Thus begins the first paragraph from this book's jacket cover. And, although this reviewer may argue with just how "crisply" this book is written, I wholeheartedly agree with the author's premise that by studying prototyping successes we may come to better prepare our own organizations for needed change and innovation. As for the book's readability, one can easily peruse is, study it, and work through its abstractions and complexity. This is a dense yet insightful work that may significantly alter the way you facilitate group work and look at models and simulations in the future.

Value of the Book for Facilitators

Serious Play picks up where Schrage's earlier work, No More Teams!-published by Doubleday, New York, 1995-leaves off. In No More Teams !, Schrage examines several key elements of creative collaboration. Notably, he introduces the concept of shared space and begins to describe the importance of prototypes in managing cross-functional creativity between partners such as Mitch Kapor and John Sachs (cocreators of the software Lotus 1-2-3) and Doctors James Watson and Francis Crick (codiscoverers of DNA's double-helix molecular structure).

Facilitators have been concerned with environmental factors for a long time. A good portion of our day-to-day job is centered on building shared space and a shared understanding of the problems at hand. In Serious Play, Schrage expands and refines these themes and draws upon a much wider range of success stories. Now we learn of the best business and innovative practices from Walt Disney, Boeing, Merrill Lynch, General Electric, Sony, IBM, IDEO, Microsoft, Royal Dutch Shell, Daimler-Chrysler and American Airlines.

Personal Learning and Professional Benefits

In my own consultative practice-where members of the public sector are looking to model so-called best business practices-these are excellent case studies from which to draw. Animation and graphic design fuel mission simulators. Aerospace companies supply both airplanes and engines that the defense community buys. And, of course, the government must safely manage global military and commercial transportation systems. Others who support the non-profit and public sectors will find examples that should directly apply to their client base.

Executives, managers, and technicians-and dare I say, facilitators-cannot ignore the importance of models and simulations in managing the change process. Schrage suggests that a complete understanding of such models and simulations is critically important to the group, for the model becomes the principal vehicle by which individuals and groups communicate. Successful facilitators must remain objective, neutral to competing stakeholder positions, and focused on the group dynamic or problem-solving process. They must also be knowledgeable of the model to effectively help a group.

Organization and Structure of the Book

In the book's preface the reader is introduced to the transactional and collaborative models of communication. In the transactional model, the sender/receiver has a conversation with another receiver/sender. In the collaborative communication model, something more happens. Sender/receivers meet in their shared space. They become totally engaged and communicate on multiple dimensions. New words, symbols, and some times entire languages are created together. This environment of communication and collaboration is their shared space.

One quotation in particular sums up the interactive nature of collaboration. Of the Mrr Media Lab, Schrage says, "You didn't have to be a sociologist to realize that the Lab's demo culture wasn't just about creating clever ideas; it was about creating clever interactions between people. The best demos let us improvise with each other, not just with the idea. The right word or gesture at the right time could change everything. That kind of creative excitement is addictive."

Following the front matter, the main portion of the book is organized into three parts: Part I: Getting Real, Part 11: Model Behavior, and Part III: S(t)imulating Innovation. Two to four chapters make up each part. Chapter headings include The New Economics of Innovation, Productive Waste, Perils of Pathological Prototyping, and Measuring Prototyping Paybacks. The reader will find these chapters as illustrative as their titles. Multiple case studies are used throughout this book. The citation of other works, thorough documentation and academic crossreferences are many. The author is both a research associate at the MIT Media Lab and a columnist for Fortune magazine. His writings integrate the styles of an academic and journalist.