Yukio Ohsawa, Kensuke Okamoto, Yuma Takahashi, and Yoko Nishihara

The Innovators Market Game (IMG) has been proposed as a tool for aiding innovative thoughts and communication, coming after our 10-year experiences in chance discovery where tools of data visualization have been applied in cases of decision making of business teams. This game enabled to run and accelerate the process of innovation, as well as to train human¡Çs talent of analogical and combinatorial thinking. In this paper, we compare the effects of IMG as table game and a Web-based environment of communication where the fundamental features of IMG are imported. The effects of these two agorae, one on the table and the other on the Web, are compared. It is shown that there are some aspects of innovative communication we can enhance, some on the table and some on the Web. This directs us to future work merging the two in one process called Innovators Marketplace as a generalization of IMG.