作者：Joost Rietveld

介绍

对技术和非技术创新两个层面上，社交游戏都处于前沿。作为文化行业的主导，社交游戏行业是动态的，贯穿各个学科并且变化快速。这意味着要想在行业中保持竞争优势，就必须在创新管理上获得成功。成功的创新管理能够带来更有效的市场响应。

从学术角度上来说，战略决策正式计划中的附加价值仍然让人捉摸不透。作为社交游戏公司，对于公司长期目标有明确的发展计划吗？我想说的是，从某种程度上来说，很多公司有这种计划，知道未来的发展方向。但是在公司成为社交游戏行业中的主导力量之前，所制定的战略仍然有许多不确定的因素。

这也就产生了如下问题：如何构建成功的创新企业？

在这篇文章中，我将探讨营造成功创新行为所需要规划的机构层面，包括机构结构、资源、知识和素质、管理风格和合法性。

startups(from business.in.com)

构建网状机构

对任何机构的创新能力而言，机构结构都非常重要。尽管不存在对所有社交游戏公司都适用的机构结构，但是通常采用的更为分散的形式，也就是所谓的网状机构。这种方法可能不适用于那些大型游戏发行公司，但对行业内多数创意型的机构能起到很大作用。社交游戏行业中的机构需要能够迅速预测到改变并制作出产品（游戏邦注：比如创意型产品），网状结构应该是最适宜社交游戏公司的结构。

网状结构介于领导结构（游戏邦注：所有事情都在内部完成的机构）和市场结构之间。其基本含义是，核心价值创造在公司内部完成，同时与外界其他价值创造活动开展合作。日本的keiretsu就是个绝佳的例证。

网状机构结构使创造和知识的传播更为简便，这得益于合理的机构结构和互补且互相依存的合作本质以及对价值创造过程的精通。

网状结构还能够赋予机构及其合作伙伴以灵活性。这使得各种进程（游戏邦注：创新开发、创新营销和随机应变）的速度得以提升。最后，网状结构还能够产生信任，包括机构成员间以及机构与其合作伙伴间的信任。信任能够降低风险。

将机构资源与素质相结合

资源与最佳实践素质的结合能够产生富有竞争力的优势，而且二者的配合还能够推动价值创造过程。资源包括实体资源、人力资源或机构资源，它们都非常有用。然而，仅仅拥有这些资源还不足以形成竞争优势。它们应该要与机构惯例或者用于配置资源的最佳实践方式相结合，这样机构才能向着最具竞争力的方向发展。

对于社交游戏公司而言，从战略层面上来说，知识可以视为最重要的资源之一。知识需要以人为载体，要获得成功的创新，它们应该为多功能团队（游戏邦注：即团队成员有着不同的背景）所利用，这个团队至少要有一个行业重要人物和位于行业网状结构中心位置的人物。随后，团队应该利用学习素质，将个人知识整合到整个团队框架中。之前提到的合作素质在这个层面也可以发挥作用。

投资者的关注点可以反映出多功能团队和面向市场的重要性。投资者通常会重点强调团队组成成员、团队动态和营销知识。动态行业中的素质也只能是动态的。社交游戏管理者应该能够构建和重新配置内部资源，以达到正确处理所面对的迅速变化的环境的目标。惯例应该简单、带有实验性甚至不稳定性，主要关注点在于从结果中学到经验。审视社交游戏机构面对的外部环境，可以得出的结论是，创新是机构生存的先决条件。只有通过内部分析机构资源和惯例并重新配置其结合方式，才能取得更有竞争力的市场位置。

战略管理风格

新产品开发需要以完整的战略管理为基础。通过对机构的分析，我们得出许多能够对有效创新开发产生作用的管理风格的组成因素。相比项目调查而言，以机构为对象的调查相对较为罕见。组成战略管理的三个因素是：高级管理的位置；创新团队的设计；机构文化。

高级管理是创新型开发的中枢。首先，从想法到新产品开发的过程由这个机构层面来规划。其次，创新应该要有个明确且为大家所知晓的战略。也就是说，所有参与创新开发的人员都应该要知道这项战略。最后，或许也是最重要的一点，高级管理应该在项目中投入精力并对创新开发的成败负责。正如上文所提到的那样，开发团队应该是多功能并且与相关网络密切配合，还必须至少拥有一名行业重要人士。

社交游戏机构通常都有着让创新行为更为便利的企业文化。以谷歌为例，其工程师有20%的闲暇时间在构思新概念和想法。

虽然加速新产品开发对社交游戏公司至关重要，但做起来比说要难得多。含有所有上述战略管理素质的机构以成功的创新行为而闻名，他们的创新销售在年度总销售量和与创新相关的市场中占很高的比例。社交游戏机构应该充分发掘公司内部的创新潜力。

创新的合法性

决定最适合的机构结构、最有价值的资源以及管理风格之后，就需要考虑机构的合法性问题。社交游戏等动态行业中的初创公司需要经历一段困难的时期方能为外界所认同。为让外界觉得这是个值得信赖的机构，你需要有成功的创新。但是，要获得成功的创新，你又需要为外界所认同。

合法性有两种形式，应当在随后的四个阶段中进行创造。认知合法性指的是有关创新及其机构的知识的传播。社会政治合法性指的是所有投资人对创新及其机构的认知程度。合法性首先应该在机构内部构建，随后是机构所处的行业，再次是其他机构，最后是公共机构层面。合法性以信任、可靠性和名声等方式表现出来，而且创新越彻底，机构越难以构建合法性。

Eidos的Ian Livingstone联合英国的NESTA创造行业层面上的合法性就是个实例。NESTA研究过英国普通大众对社交游戏行业的认知方式及其现状后，提出以下要求：1、通过标准化正式宣布的游戏教育机构的课程来营造行业最佳实践方式；2、在政府机构和普通大众中营造英国社交游戏行业的合法性。此类综合举措进一步确立了英国社交游戏行业的合法性，并且为初创游戏公司的建立奠定了坚实的基础。

结论

在社交游戏行业中构建创新机构并非易事。以上提及的机构层面都经过细致的调查研究，而且都是些已正式可以借鉴的概念。以上所提及的四个层面虽然可以为已确立地位以及初创社交游戏机构提供指导，但不能视为综合性的“战略指导”。作为文化行业之一，社交游戏是个易变和动态的领域，即便最为成功的公司都有可能失败。但是，遵从上述建议应该能够帮助行业内的机构根据行业变化迅速做出改变。成功进驻市场之后，真正的挑战在于如何保持创新性以使公司保持竞争性。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Building an Innovative Social Games Startup

Joost Rietveld

Introduction

Social games are at the forefront of both technical and non-technical innovation. As a prime example of a cultural industry, the social game industry is dynamic, inter-disciplinary and rapidly changing. This implies that in order to compete, one has to be successful at innovation management. Successful innovation management leads to more effective market response be it response to environmental issues or competitors.

From an academic perspective, the added value of formal planning for strategic decisions remains ambiguous. Should you as a social game company have an explicit process for determining the firm’s long-range objectives? I would say up to certain extent, yes; know where you want to go, but remain contingent in your strategies until you are a dominant force within the social game industry.

This raises the following question: How to create a successful innovative organization?

In this article I argue that the following organizational facets need to be planned for in order to create successful innovative behavior: organization structure, resources, knowledge and capabilities, management style, and legitimacy.

Creating a Network Organization

Organization structure is of great importance to any organization’s innovative capacity. Although there is no perfect one-suits-all organization structure for social game companies, they generally have moved away from “vertically integrated monsters” to more disintegrated forms, also known as network organizations. This might not hold for the few but very significant consolidated publishing houses, but this definitely holds for most creative output-producing organizations in the industry. As organizations in the social game industry have to be able to anticipate changes quickly and be contingent with their output (i.e. be innovative), a network structure should be the preferred organization structure for social game companies.

A network organization lies between a hierarchy (an organization that does everything in-house) and a market structure (buying from a “market”). It basically means you keep your core added value creation in-house and create partnerships around all other value creation activities. The Japanese keiretsu is a good example.

Network organization structures facilitate the creation and spread of knowledge, an intangible and difficult to grasp subject matter. This is due to the flatter organization structure, the complementary and interdependent nature of the partnerships and specialization in value creation processes.

A network structure also implies a degree of flexibility to the organizations and its partners. This enables a certain speed within the variety of processes (innovation development, innovation to market, and/or change capacity). Lastly, network organizations lead to trust. Trust within members of the organizations and between the organization and its partners. Trust reduces risk and a low perception of risk facilitates an innovative climate.

Combining Organization Resources with Capabilities

Competitive advantage is created by combining the resources you have with best practice capabilities that, together, lead to contingent value creation processes. Resources can be either physical capital, human capital or organizational capital, and are most useful when they are Valuable, Rare, Imperfectly Imitable, and Non-Substitutable (VRIN). Having these resources by themselves, however, isn’t enough for a competitive advantage. They should be combined with organizational routines, or best practices that configure the resources, and subsequently the organization, towards the most competitive position possible.

For social game companies, knowledge can be seen as one of the most important resources, strategically. Knowledge resides in people, and for innovations to be successful they should be developed by teams that are cross-functional (from different backgrounds), have at least one industry heavyweight, and one person with a central position within the industry network. The team, then, should develop a learning capability or an “innovation routine” where tacit knowledge is explicated, and specialized individual knowledge is integrated within the broader team. The aforementioned capability of forming alliances is also relevant in this perspective.

The importance of a cross functional team and market orientation is reflected by investor focus. Investors generally put great emphasis on team composition, team dynamics and market knowledge. Capabilities in dynamic industries can only be dynamic. Managers in social game are expected to build and reconfigure internal competencies to address the rapidly changing environment they face. Routines should be simple, experiential, and even unstable, with a focus on learning from the outcomes. Examining the external environment social game organizations face, one is left to conclude that innovation is a prerequisite for survival. It is only by internal analysis of one’s resources and routines, and the reconfiguration of this combination, that one can design for a more competitive market position.

Strategic Management Style

New product development stands and falls with adequate strategic management. Taking the organization as level of analysis teaches us a number of factors that comprise of a management style that contributes to effective innovation development. Research on the organization level (rather than the project level) has been relatively scarce, but empirically tested nevertheless. Three broad factors that belong to the realms of strategic management are known to contribute to effective innovation development; these are (1) the role of senior management, (2) designing for innovation teams, and (3) organizational culture.

Senior management has a pivotal role in the development of innovations. For one, it is up to this organizational layer to formulate a process for new product development from idea creation to launch and beyond. Secondly, there should be an explicit and well communicated strategy for the innovation. All involved in the development of the innovation should be aware of this strategy too. Lastly, but perhaps most important, senior management should be committed and be held accountable to/for the success of the innovation. As mentioned before, development teams should be cross-functional, well embedded in the relevant network and contain at least one dedicated heavyweight innovation-champion.

Social game organizations are often culture-driven and it’s no coincidence that having an entrepreneurial culture facilitates innovative organization behavior. Google, for example, give their engineers 20 percent free time to think of new concepts. However, certain boundaries should be set to safeguard strategic focus and synergy across innovations.

Accelerating in new product development, however pivotal in social games, is easier said than done. The research I am referring to in this article actually found no innovation stars, just solid performers. Organizations that have the above strategic management capabilities in place — all of them — are known for successful innovative behavior, in the sense that they had a high ratio of innovation sales to total annual sales and relative market performance of innovations. Despite being of importance, having an iTunes feature clearly isn’t the only influence on success. Social game organizations should rather be inward looking initially to capture the full potential of their organization at large!

Creating Legitimacy

After having decided on your preferred organization structure, the most valuable resources to have, and the management style to implement, it is all about legitimizing your organization (and industry). Start-up organizations in dynamic industries such as social game might have a hard time to be perceived as trustworthy or legit. This is a bit of a catch-22. In order to be perceived as a trusted organization you need to have a track record of successful innovations; however, in order to create such a track record you need to be perceived as trusted.

Legitimacy exists in two forms and should be created at four succeeding stages. Cognitive legitimacy refers to the spread of knowledge about an innovation and its organization. Sociopolitical legitimacy refers to the degree of how appropriate an innovation and its organization are perceived by all stakeholders. Legitimacy should first be created within the organization, then within the industry the organization is operative, followed by other organizations and, lastly, legitimacy should be created at institutional level. Legitimacy is embodied in trust, reliability and reputation and, as such, the more radical an innovation is, the harder it becomes for an organization to create legitimacy.

An illustrative example of an attempt of creating legitimacy at industry level is Eidos “life president” Ian Livingstone in association with trade body NESTA in the UK. After having conducted research on how the UK social game industry is perceived by the general population versus its actual state, NESTA is on a quest for (1) creating industry best practices by standardizing the curricula of proclaimed gaming educational institutes, and, (2) creating awareness, or legitimizing, the state of the UK social game industry amongst both government bodies and the general public. Such collective effort is bound to further establish and legitimize the UK social game industry and creates a solid foundation from which starting gaming companies can build from.

Conclusion

Creating an innovative organization in the social game industry is by no means an easy task. The organizational facets described above are well researched and often proven concepts. The four facets however are by no means an exhaustive list and as such might guide both established and starting social game organizations, however cannot be seen as a comprehensive ‘strategy guide’. As a cultural industry, social game is a volatile and dynamic space where even the most successful organizations can be tipped off their toes from one day to the other. Deploying the organizational facets as described above however, should enable organizations operative in industries such as social game to change swiftly and act contingently. Upon having entered the market, the challenge is to remain innovative in order to both anticipate changes in the competitive landscape as to catalyze them. (source:gamasutra)