User:AndriusKulikauskas/Gamestorming

Gamestorming is a set of practices for facilitating innovation in the business world. A facilitator leads a group towards some goal by way of a game, a structured activity that provides scope for thinking freely, even playfully.

Gamestorming as a term suggests the use of games for brainstorming. It is the title of a book by Dave Gray, Sunni Brown and James Macanufo, published in 2010. They document what amounts to a pattern language of 83 games, noting for each the object of play, number of players, duration of play, rules how to play, strategy and origin. Previously, in 2007, Luke Hohmann popularized the term innovation games to refer to 12 games for  primary market research.

A game may be thought of as an alternative to the standard business meeting. Most games involve 3 to 20 people and last from 15 minutes to an hour and a half. A game suspends some of the usual protocols of life and replaces them with a new set of rules for interaction. Games may require a few props such as sticky notes, poster paper, markers, random pictures from magazines, or thought provoking objects. Gamestorming skills include asking questions (opening, navigating, examining, experimenting, closing), structuring large diagrams, sketching ideas, fusing words and pictures with visual language, and most importantly, improvising to choose and lead a suitable game or invent a new one.

The Gamestorming book is used in classes on interactive design and user experience, and social media marketing and referenced in innovation , product development , visual note taking and self realization.

Origins of Games
The gamestorming culture originated in the 1970s in Silicon Valley. Some of the games have earlier roots, as documented in the Gamestorming book.
 * Button is inspired by the Native American  Talking Stick tradition.
 * Heart, Hand, Mind is inspired by Swiss educational reformer Heinrich Pestalozzi
 * NUF Test is based on patent tests.
 * Poster Session is common to academia.
 * Show and Tell is known from elementary school.
 * Storyboarding is credited to Walt Disney Studios.
 * The Blind Side is inspired by Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham's communication model Johari Window.
 * Toyota founder, inventor Sakichi Toyoda developed the  5 Whys, the basis of Toyota's scientific approach.
 * Jiro Kawakita in the 1960s developed the KJ Method, also known as Affinity Map.
 * SWOT Analysis is based on Albert S Humphrey's SWOT Analysis.
 * Card sorting is used by information architects.
 * Elevator Pitch is commonplace in the venture capital community.
 * RACI matrix is a tool of team management.

Over time, facilitators created an eclectic variety of techniques which can be used as games:
 * 4 Cs is based on a game by Matthew Richter in the March 2004 publication of Thiagi GameLetter.
 * Anti-Problem is based on Reverse It from Donna Spencer's design games website, http://www.designgames.com.au
 * Brainwriting is credited to Michael Michailko's Thinkertoys and also Horst Geschke and associates at the Batelle Institute in Frankfurt, Germany, and also related to 6-3-5 Brainwriting developed by Bernd Rohrbach.
 * Bodystorming was coined by Colin Burns at CHI'94 in Boston, Massachusetts.
 * Business Model Canvas was designed by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, and featured in their book, Business Model Generation.
 * Campfire was inspired by Tell Me A Story: Narrative and Intelligence (Rethinking Theory) by Roger Schank and Gary Saul Morson.
 * Customer, Employee, Shareholder is based on the Stakeholder Framework developed by Max Clarkson in A Stakeholder Framework for Analyzing and Evaluating Corporate Social Performance in the Academy of Management Review (1995).
 * Design the Box is attributed, independently, to Luke Hohmann, Jim Highsmith and Bill Schackelford.
 * Context map, Cover Story, History Map, Visual Agenda and The Graphic Gameplan are credited to The Grove Consultants International.
 * Fishbowl is based on ideas from Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making by Sam Kaner et al.
 * Force Field Analysis is based on Kurt Lewin's framework  Force Field Analysis.
 * Graphic Jam is inspired by Leslie Salmon-Zhu of International Forum for Visual Practitioners.
 * Help Me Understand is adapted from Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision Making by Sam Kaner and inspired by Five W's and H in Techniques of Structured Problem Solving, Second Edition by A.B.VanGundy, Jr.
 * Heuristic Ideation Technique is documented by Edward Tauber in his 1972 paper HIT:Heuristic Ideation Technique, A Systematic Procedure for New Product Search.
 * Image-ination is based on Picture This! adapted from the Visual Icebreaker Kit.
 * Make a World inspired by Ed Emberley's book.
 * Open Space was invented by Harrison Owen, author of Open Space Technology: A User's Guide.
 * Pecha Kucha, first held in Tokyo in 2003, was devised by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham of Klein Dytham architecture.
 * Post-Up is based on exercises in Rapid Problem-Solving with Post-it Notes by David Straker.
 * The Pitch and Value Map are by Sarah Rink.
 * Red:Green Cards are by Jerry Michalski.
 * Speedboat, 20/20 Vision and Prune the Future are based on Luke Hohmann's innovation games in his book Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play.
 * Talking Chips was inspired by the email program Attent by Byron Reeves.
 * Wizard of Oz was pioneered in the 1970's in the development of the airport kiosk and IBM's listening typewriter.
 * The World Cafe as practiced at http://www.theworldcafe.com
 * James Macanufo contributed more than a dozen games to the Gamestorming book.

See also:
Innovation game, Game: Business games,  Business game,  Serious game,  Creativity technique,  Open innovation,  Facilitation,  Technological innovation system,  User experience design,  Seven Management and Planning Tools,  Finite and infinite games,  Team building