The Team
Begin with an interdependent team of scientists, engineers, and creative designers from Ingress, Niantic, and Nintendo. Each branch had a small core group where disciplines were both overlapping and distinct. Each core group functioned like a band where the primary instruments provided the foundation and ad hoc session artists were brought in when specialization was needed.
The Creative Team was made up of a small, seasoned group. They each had proven creative DNA in their career paths and, being in the 60-something age group, had very little ego on the line. They have yet to revel in the glory of creating the booming, cross-generation, world-wide success of Pokémon Go. They’re focused on evolving geo-mobile gaming to the next level.
The Method
The designers understood that magic happens when creative elements from diverse universes crash into each other. Everything is enabled by pulling things from other disciplines into yours. You have to be willing to get lost. Being lost happens when your actual surroundings no longer match your mental map. A lot is familiar but you can’t decipher your world.
When this happens, you migrate into the new world or perish as a lost soul trying to retrieve the old map. Those who adapt get to keep moving forward in an unknown direction toward a common goal (create a product that will make people want to go out and play). The new map invites you to treat the new world like the internet where all the resources you need are at your fingertips. In order to accomplish this, everyone on the team had to agree to a few basic rules of engagement.
- The methodology is rooted in improvisation. You have to go along with whatever premise was created. Challenges and conflict are welcome as long as you begin with “Yes, and…” rather than “Yes, but…”
- Keep the conversation progressing so that creative elements can emerge.
- Allow the team to become biologic rather than industrial. Let the dynamics of the team fuel the energy needed to create something new.
- Trust that structure will form as the conversation moves forward. These algorithms become the foundation for your invention.
Lessons
Teams like the one that created Pokémon Go are always evolving. While this game is groundbreaking, each talented member of the core team has already moved on to their next project. What now appears as a creative ceiling will soon become the floor supporting the next imaginative endeavor. The team of 60-somethings will never lapse into irrelevance. They’re too busy discovering new ways to navigate the world.
How about you? Are you lost or found? Are you migrating or dying? Have you adapted to a world that rewards sharing and collaboration and sheds the perks of the hierarchy? Can you keep the conversation moving forward? Yes, and…
