Institute For The Future

Humanities Gaming Institute: A Model for Lightweight Innovation in Highly Traditional Organizations?

IFTF colleague Sean Ness recently drew my attention to an interesting lightweight innovation event being held this summer at the University of South Carolina, the Humanities Gaming Institute. During three weeks in June, a group of 20 fellows selected in a competitive selection process with work with three gamedesign experts to prototype new online games that can be used to conduct research and teach the humanities.

I think this model is particularly relevant for large organizations as they think about how to implement lightweight innovation experiments, if only because the humanities are probably the best analogue for big organizations in the academic world - tradition-bound, under-resourced, and usually techno-phobic. If this model can produce rapid, low-cost incremental breakthroughs that can start to add up to real change in how the humanities are studied and taught, it will be something that I think many companies will be able to emulate.

Keep an eye on this. Great things look to be in the making.