The development process, from the ideation stage through to finalising the game, took just over six months.
While we could bring content expertise and an understanding of how innovation policy processes could be simulated into the boundaries of a game, we needed help from Digital Liberties, a cooperative of game makers, designers and policy analysts, who we commissioned to develop the concept, rules and design identity.
A group of policymakers from South east Asia play-testing the first prototype of Innovate!
We were inspired to develop the game by board games like Datopolis, ₹ubbish! and IMPACT, and by cohorts of policymakers taking part in our flagship capacity-building programme, the Global Innovation Policy Accelerator, who showed interest in testing it.
We worked with the following groups to test prototypes at different stages of maturity and used their feedback to develop the game during July and August 2018.
- April 2018: Policymakers from South East Asia taking part in Nesta’s Global Innovation Policy Accelerator programme.
- June 2018: Innovation policy experts and practitioners taking part in Nesta’s Innovation Growth Lab Global Conference in Boston.
