Gamification for Innovators and Entrepreneurs: Using Games to Drive Innovation and Facilitate Learning

Runner-up Best Book Award EURAM 2023

Gamification for Innovators and Entrepreneurs is about an exciting, still emerging superpower. One that empowers you to use, repurpose and create games that will help solve the great societal and organisational challenges that companies, startups and nonprofits are facing today – games that are explicitly designed and can be iteratively improved to engage stakeholders, facilitate experimentation and actually drive innovation.

What makes gamification a superpower is its use of powerful methods and techniques from diverse disciplines and traditions – like futures studies, user experience, agile management, design thinking or business design – in a new, action-oriented and engaging framework. Each game world is a safe, playful space, where groups are free to experiment in innovative and inclusive forms of collaboration.

Gamification for Innovators and Entrepreneurs builds on insights and knowledge from over 150 leading experts in the field. It provides a rich collection of materials for innovators, entrepreneurs and game designers that allows you to dive deep into innovation and entrepreneurship, into games and gamification. You can build on 36 gamification design patterns – like dilemma solving, experiential learning, innovation markets and storytelling – and use a game design canvas to create your own innovation games. Or you can customize some of the 70+ games featured in the book that are already in use by innovators, entrepreneurs and professional trainers. Additional resources are provided for teachers and game facilitators.

The superpower of gamification does not yield simplistic solutions – but the resources from Gamification for Innovators and Entrepreneurs will provide you with the means and the confidence to tackle some of the great challenges we are all facing today.

• An easily accessible and comprehensive overview on gamification and games in the context of innovation and entrepreneurship
• Draws on several collaborative research projects involving partners such as Lego, Deutsche Telekom, Lufthansa Systems, 3M, Danske Bank, and Nokia Systems.
• Extensive experience of the authors in the facilitation of games, their role as an enabler of learning and their potential to facilitate transformation.
• 36 reusable gamification design patterns, a five-step process and a game design canvas to create one’s own innovation games
• Summaries and references of more than 70+ customizable games that are already in use by innovators, entrepreneurs and professional trainers
• Educational materials for teachers, trainers and game facilitators

Henning Breuer consults, researches, and teaches in the fields of innovation management and business psychology using gamification and games in his consulting work and university teaching. He is a Professor for Business and Media Psychology at HMKW Berlin and founder of UXBerlin – Innovation Consulting. Since 2001, Henning has worked with multinational corporations, SMEs, public organisations, and start-ups, providing consulting on sustainable innovation culture and business models, future scenarios, and ethnographic stakeholder research. Henning has co-authored numerous journal and conference publications and textbooks on Values-Based Innovation Management and Sustainable Business Model Design. As a visiting researcher and professor, he has worked at the University of Chile (Santiago) and Waseda University (Tokyo).

John Bessant has been active in the field of research and consultancy in technology and innovation management for over 40 years. In addition to his role as Emeritus Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Exeter he has visiting appointments at the universities of Stavanger, Norway and Erlangen-Nuremburg, Germany. He is the author of over 45 books and monographs and many articles on the topic and has lectured and consulted widely around the world. His most recent books include Managing Innovation (now in its 7th edition), Entrepreneurship and Riding the Innovation Wave. You can find more and follow his blog at https://johnbessant.org

Sune Gudiksen has worked extensively with design, innovation management, future scenario design and strategic foresight. One medium of choice for him is play and game-based techniques to support stakeholder participation,
high engagement, novelty in directions and quality learning outcome. He holds a PhD in co-design of services and business models through design thinking games and is currently associate professor in strategic design and
innovation management at Design School Kolding, Denmark. He has been a project leader of several projects at various national innovation networks. As well, he is project leader on international EU projects focusing on strategic
design, innovation management and play and game techniques to support stronger development and learning. He has authored several international books over the years directed towards industries and practitioners, and published a number of conference papers and journal articles in design and innovation management.