Addison-Wesley Professional Publishes ''Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play''; New Book Unlocks Secrets of Customer-Centric Innovation.

UPPER SADDLE RIVER, N.J. -- Addison-Wesley Professional today announced the publication of "Innovation Games: Creating Breakthrough Products Through Collaborative Play," a book that leads both companies and the customers they serve to the sweet spot of all innovation: the insight into "what you didn't know that you didn't know."

Innovation Games were developed by Luke Hohmann, the founder and CEO of Enthiosys, Inc., a Silicon Valley-based software product strategy and management consulting firm. Hohmann and his team at Enthiosys have honed these games with myriad clients including QUALCOMM, Emerson Climate Technologies, Rally Software Development, and Wyse Technology. In this book, Hohmann shares the secrets and best practices for how a company can enlist its own customers to become its best confidants--to help companies create the products customers really want, while avoiding the impasse that often results from more standard and costly market research techniques such as surveys or interviews.

Hohmann opens the book with a list of common challenges involved with any innovation work, including: What features do customers want in the next product release?; How do customers use our product?; How do my customers perceive the relationships between my product and other products?, and; What is my customers' definition of success? Throughout the book, Hohmann maps each business need to the set of games best designed to help answer these pressing questions, while walking readers through the start-to-finish of the entire Innovation Games process.

Each Innovation Game is designed to allow groups of customers to leverage multiple dimensions of communication, as multi-dimensional communication enables access to the full creative and analytic power of the brain. In this way, the games create a deep level of engagement that gets past communication barriers and produces the most honest and useful feedback.

"When I took my first product management position, I found that simply asking customers what they wanted was not very useful. Customers don't often know what they want, and, depending on how you ask, can become frustrated with the question. I needed something that would really engage customers and show me what I didn't know I didn't know," Hohmann said.

"I started playing games with small groups of customers to see if a new approach would help and soon we were able to use the games to create breakthroughs in understanding," Hohmann said.

He continued, "We've also learned that by involving cross-functional teams and sharing customer-generated feedback with the extended product team, all involved parties feel highly invested in returning actionable results."

The book is organized into three parts. In Part I, Hohmann outlines the 12 games, which sport thought-provoking names such as "Prune the Product Tree," "20/20 Vision," "Give Them a Hot Tub," and "Remember the Future." Part I also guides readers on how to select the right Innovation Game for their individual needs, followed by help with the logistics of preparation (including facilitator selection, observer coaching, and customer invitations), and most importantly, post-game results processing that will drive real results for customers in the months and years ahead.

Part II provides a detailed description of each game, showing readers how to prepare for, play, and then process the results of each specific game. The book closes with Part III, which delves into an expanded overview of planning and logistics, including sample pre- and post-event customer communications.

"Innovation Games" is richly illustrated throughout with graphics, charts and diagrams, and the book is bundled with four-color game cards to help facilitators in real-life scenarios. For more information and a sample chapter, visit www.awprofessional.com/title/0321437292. The book is available through major chain and independent booksellers worldwide and through online vendors at a suggested retail price of US $29.99.

About Pearson Education 

Educating 100 million people worldwide, Pearson Education (www.pearsoned.com) is the global leader in educational and professional publishing, providing scientifically research-based print and digital programs to help people of all ages learn at their own pace, in their own way. Professionals, leaders, academics, experts, and consultants draft the books and online resources that help develop today's and tomorrow's business leaders. Top technology companies who have chosen Pearson Education as their publishing partners include IBM, Microsoft, Cisco, Hewlett Packard, Intel, Adobe, and Macromedia. The company is home to such renowned publishing brands as IBM Press, Prentice Hall Professional, Addison-Wesley Professional, Peachpit Press, Cisco Press, Que Publishing, and InformIT. Pearson Education is part of Pearson (NYSE:PSO), the international media company. In addition to Pearson Education, Pearson's primary operations include the Financial Times Group and the Penguin Group.

About Enthiosys

Enthiosys is a software product management consulting firm dedicated to helping companies who develop software-enabled products. We leverage proven techniques and methodologies to improve your software product management process and the effectiveness of the professionals who participate in that process. To better understand how Enthiosys can help you get the most out of your software product management organization by delivering greater value to your customers, getting to market faster, and increasing your bottom line, visit us at www.enthiosys.com.

Other product or service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.

Note To Editors:

ADVANCE PRAISE QUOTES FOR "Innovation Games"

"Continuous innovation is hard. Continuously innovating the right products, features, and capabilities is even harder. After seeing these Innovation Games in action with real customers driving the development of real products, I am convinced that Luke has created a better way to ensure that customers get what they truly want. These games are fun for customers. But more importantly, they get customers thinking in unique and unusual ways, which leads to better innovation."

- Ken Collier, PhD, President, KWC Technologies, Inc.

"We played the game Buy a Feature with customers at our Customer Advisory Board meeting. Everybody had a good experience and realized how important their request is for Trend. We used this feedback to make good choices regarding feature priorities. The entire process was excellent!"

- Eric Chang, Global Product Manager, Trend Micro ServerProtect for Linux

"One of the most difficult tasks of a product manager is to understand customer needs and translate them into product features. This book not only makes this task fun and entertaining, but also easy to accomplish. The approaches are straightforward and make so much sense that I kept on finding myself saying, 'Now why didn't I think of that before?' Through his Innovative Games, Luke Hohmann does a magnificent job in harnessing and enticing customers to help product teams understand their customers in return."

-Laila Arad-Allan, Senior Product Manager, Software DRM, Aladdin Knowledge Systems