Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers, July/2010

Great things don't happen in a vacuum. But creating an environment for creative thinking and innovation can be a daunting challenge. How can you make it happen at your company? The answer may surprise you: Gamestorming.

This book includes more than 80 games to help you break down barriers, communicate better, and generate new ideas, insights, and strategies. The authors have identified tools and techniques from some of the world's most innovative professionals, whose teams collaborate and make great things happen. This book is the result: a unique collection of games that encourage engagement and creativity while bringing more structure and clarity to the workplace. Find out why -- and how -- with Gamestorming.

• Overcome conflict and increase engagement with team-oriented games
• Improve collaboration and communication in cross-disciplinary teams with visual-thinking techniques
• Improve understanding by role-playing customer and user experiences
• Generate better ideas and more of them, faster than ever before
• Shorten meetings and make them more productive
• Simulate and explore complex systems, interactions, and dynamics
• Identify a problem's root cause, and find the paths that point toward a solution

Gamestorming provides a great collection of games to assist a group in approaching and resolving challenges.

The book is setup into three major areas:

1. Explanation of Gamestorming – For those that would like to understand gamestorming and how it can assist your organization, the first three chapters provide you with all the details that you will want to know (and then some) about games, the essentials for gamestorming and the core gamestorming skills. I also think these chapters are essential reading for anyone who will be overseeing a gamestorming session;

2. The Games – The following four chapters provide you with approximately 90 games that you could jump right into. Each game stands on its own and you are therefore free to pick and choose the games for your particular situation. I was very impressed with the amount of information and explanation that the authors provided. For example, for each game they discussed: Object of Play; Number of Players; Duration of Play; How to Play; and Strategy; and

3. Putting Gamestorm to Work – This was my favorite chapter. They discussed a real-life example of how a group used gamestorming to consider solutions to a specific problem, including the games played, the outcomes and the benefits to the group.

I recommend Gamestorming to everyone who is looking for alternatives to help their organization "solve complex problems through collaborative play".

About the Authors:
Dave Gray is the Founder and Chairman of XPLANE, the visual thinking company. Founded in 1993, XPLANE has grown to be the world's leading consulting and design firm focused on information-driven communications. Dave's time is spent researching and writing on visual business, as well as speaking, coaching and delivering workshops to educators, corporate clients and the public. He is also a founding member of VizThink, an international community of Visual Thinkers.

Sunni Brown, M.P.A., is Owner of BrightSpot Info Design, a company specializing in visual thinking to support organizational and group success. Sunni was trained in graphic facilitation at The Grove Consultants International, a San Francisco-based company that pioneered the use of visuals in meetings and group processes. She is currently an Associate of The Grove, a freelance consultant for XPlane - the visual thinking company - and an Associate of Alphachimp Studios. She is also co-Founder of VizThink Austin, currently the largest visual thinking community in the United States. Sunni presents regularly on the topics of graphic facilitation, graphic recording and visual thinking. She is also a contributing researcher for Nancy Duarte's upcoming book on storytelling and presentations. Sunni holds Bachelor's degrees in Journalism and Linguistics and a Master's in Public Affairs from the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs. She lives in Austin, TX.

James Macanufo: As a consultant at XPLANE, James helps large technology and government clients develop their vision, strategy and communication plans. He actively obsessed with understanding what things are, the way they work, and why they matter. He is also an active gamer and occasional inventor of card games.