Just scanned Michael Schrage's 'Serious Play' and was delighted by his approach to innovation. As quoted by Tom Peters, his principal axiom:
"You can't be a serious innovator unless you are ready and able to play. 'Serious play' is not an oxymoron; it is the essence of innovation." And, in turn, the heart of his serious play is ... fast prototyping: "Effective prototyping may be the most valuable core competence an innovative organization can hope to have." His (Schrage's) intriguing connection, which makes all the sense in the world to me, is that true innovation comes not from the idea per se, though it guides the work, but from the "reaction to the prototype." In fact, in a surprising number of cases (the majority?) the collective responses to a host of fast prototypes reshape the original idea beyond recognition—or lead one down an entirely new path."
This approach needs to be adopted by advertisers. This doesn't mean we need to jump on every fad and experiment with it. But we should invest in Emerging Media, gather quick learnings and reinvest in altered emerging media opportunities.
If you strategize for too long, wait around until competitors are dominating the field by deploying their prototype learnings, you'll be quickly irrelevant.
We live in fast times and new to adopt faster:
"The secret of fast progress is inefficiency, fast and furious and numerous failures."—Kevin Kelly, founding editor, Wired
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