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11 Lessons in Innovation From World of Warcraft
Posted: Thursday, April 10, 2008

Blizzard Entertainment, the envy of the computer game industry, has learned 11 lessons on innovation that can help almost any business.

Irvine-based Blizzard used these innovation methods not only to create the world’s most popular massively multi-player online game, World of Warcraft, but also to keep the game fresh and challenging for more than 10 million players.

Because many of those customers pay $15 a month to continue playing, Blizzard’s ongoing creative achievement is worth more than $1 billion a year in revenues, not counting the multi-millions it tallies from its other games, such as StarCraft, Diablo II and Warcraft III, plus trading cards, comic books, etc.

This combination of creativity and profitability is much of the reason for the upcoming merger of game company Activision with Blizzard’s parent company, Vivendi Games. The new company, to be called Activision Blizzard, will be valued at about $18.9 billion.

The following lineup of innovation lessons emerged from a video game conference, an interview, and several experts’ comments.

See the full article