Innovating in the IP landscape

While many are familiar with Angry Birds and its many mobile gaming permutations, there is an entire eco-system of Angry Birds products that continues to thrive. With the mobile platform still evolving and remaining one of the most agile and demanding verticals, it's not enough to understand what games people play. It's also about understanding how, when and why they play.

As Creative Director of IP Development at Rovio Entertainment, Mikko Pöllä is tasked with taking one of the world's most recognizable properties and keeping it fresh and new.

With the Angry Birds movie slated for a 2016 release, Mikko is spreading his wings and slowly expanding his reach. And with his work on new properties not directly related to Angry Birds he's taken a new moniker - The IP guy.

6 questions with Mikko Pöllä:

What makes an innovative culture? How do you create a culture of innovation?
Innovation is in the nature of mobile games, everybody understands this. The mobile gaming industry is always changing so rapidly, its the DNA of the business. Technology changes and evolves all the time. The platforms, the devices they evolve. Also people and there behaviour evolves. So many core areas of the industry are constantly changing. If your making frying pans you can basically use the same mould for 10 years. here it doesn't work like that. Internally, it's about the passion to do something and create something unique that hasn't been done before. That drive to create something that deserves to be published to the audience of the world.

How do you reset your creativity to generate new ideas?

My first job was in the story room of a soap opera while I was still in film school. I learned to trust in the power of deadlines. I learnt to trust that a good idea will come. One of my more successful projects we started three days before the deadline. On the more practical side at any given time I have 10-20 ideas that I would love to develop. So usually I have a line of ideas stored up. I think also it's important to be very brutal in the early stages of the project and plan long term. Once you know that you have an engine in place you won't hit the wall. You sort of engineer your concept so it keeps producing new material from the beginning.

How do you identify trends? What resources does your team use to spot trends and consumer insights?

We have an insights team, whenever there's some information that we want to find they can help us. But every now and then we sit down with a small team and we sort of stop for awhile and say where is the world going? How do we see the gaming world and the entertainment world in a year or two years time? How are our plans are reflecting that? I also believe you need to keep your eyes open. It's as important as believing in your own crazy ideas. No matter how out there they might seem.

What is the biggest challenge you face when innovating?

In mobile gaming it is definitely a very condensed and small amount of time and space you have in order to create interest in your new thing. The app world has so many new games and new apps in stores daily. People browse through them very quickly. You have one second, one icon and the name to get people interested in clicking. If your lucky they click the icon and see the log line and a few more pictures. Those small elements have to make an impact and make people want to learn more. That is a big challenge.

Have you identified any gaps in your innovation process that you're looking to improve on?

The big dilemma in modern gaming is you learn fast and/or you fail fast. On the other hand you don't really know how successful a property is before you soft launch it. How to know if something works or not without having to spend a year on a project can be a challenge. At the same time how do you test it, make it available and make sure that its close enough to something you want to make but not spend too much time on.

Looking to the future, how is Rovio going to continue to be a leader in innovation

We need a greater understanding of the mindset of people who sit down with their phones and tablets and understand how they want to be entertained. From my point of view, all entertainment is and has been moving towards personal devices. When I think of myself sitting down on the sofa picking up a device I might not know, at that time, what I'm going to do. Am I going to watch some videos, or go on social media or play a game. So the barriers between mediums are gone. It's not enough to create games. We are not only competing for gaming time with people. We're competing on a much bigger scale of how people behave and use their time. As a company that's where we will continue to grow and understand our consumer.