An article in yesterday edition of the WSJ about game company Hasbro and their innovation practices (by Carol Hymowitz). Some excerpts:
To spur innovation, Hasbro managers keep in touch with a global network of game inventors, do online surveys of customers and observe thousands of children and adults playing games developed in a new lab called GameWorks at the division's headquarters. They also talk with prospective customers about their lives and how they want to spend leisure time (...) "People don't have time to play a game for three hours, so we're asking ourselves how we can leverage brands so they can be played in smaller time frames," says Jill Hambley, a vice president of marketing. (...) Hasbro is also gunning for technology-savvy customers. Sales of videogames outpace board games by more than six to one, so Hasbro makes versions of its board games that can be played on laptops, cellphones or in video format.
Why do I blog this? no big breakthrough here but it's interesting to understand how they work/innovate and of course the results are not surprising: small time chunk devoted for gaming (same a video game industry), use of tech to create new experience.