In his seminal work on innovation, Dealing with Darwin, Geoffrey Moore makes a powerful case that companies who serve complex-systems markets must rely on qualitative research to guide their decisions. As Moore explains, a "Complex-systems architecture specializes in tackling complex problems and coming up with individualized solutions with a high proportion of consulting services." Such companies are characterized by relatively small numbers of customers, and a small number of transactions with each customer, with each transaction costing hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars.

As Moore describes it, qualitative scenarios drive the research efforts of complex-systems architectures. From p. 39: "In the complex-systems model, market research has a qualitative bias because each customer constitutes a market reality unto itself. For example, the commercial airline businesses at Airbus and Boeing have perhaps two hundred or so primary customers worldwide to consider. Statistically averaging insights across such a modest customer population makes no sense. Instead, you want to delve deeply into the specific circumstances of each account, seeking out unique patterns, not mathematical correlations. This is where war stories and hypothetical scenarios, even just the occasional apt metaphor, can prove so insightful."

Innovation Games are explicitly designed to provide you with these kinds of insights through direct interaction with your customers.


Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play
By Luke Hohmann