Boom or Bust?

An Innovation Prediction Exercise

Boom

Bust

Each year, Popular Science magazine honours breakthrough innovations with their prestigious "Best of What's New" awards. Yet predicting which technologies will achieve market success remains notoriously difficult—even for expert judges.

The Challenge

You will review 10 actual BOWN award winners from 2010–2019, randomly selected from a pool of 34 innovations
Predict whether each became a BOOM (commercial success) or BUST (market failure)
Each innovation has a 30-second decision window
Every session presents different innovations in random order

Approximately 8 minutes · 10 cases · 30 seconds each

Points

Streak

Case

1/10

Correct

Wrong

⏱

2015

Innovation Name

Description of the innovation goes here...

Expert quote goes here.

▲ BOOM

Company Name

Explanation...

Key Insight

Lesson text...

+100 points

How confident are you in this prediction?

Exercise Complete

0 of 10

Your performance message...

Points

Best Streak

How well did you know what you knew?

Achievements

Key Patterns in Innovation Outcomes

Counter-Intuitive Outcomes

More from the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Playbook

Free, open-source simulations for innovation and entrepreneurship teaching.

The Slingshot Found and run an AI startup.

The Disruptor Drive innovation inside a large firm. Build, Bin, Boost Run an R&D portfolio.

Updates and teaching ideas at the Playbook newsletter.

About This Game

🎯 Purpose

Boom or Bust? is an educational exercise designed to teach students and professionals about the challenges of predicting innovation success. Through rapid decision-making, players discover how difficult it is to forecast commercial outcomes—even for technologies endorsed by expert judges.

📚 Learning Objectives

Recognise the inherent uncertainty in technology commercialisation
Understand that expert endorsement doesn't guarantee market success
Identify common patterns in innovation success and failure

🏫 Educational Use

This exercise works well as a session opener for courses on innovation management, technology strategy, or entrepreneurship. It typically sparks rich discussion about why "expert-approved" innovations fail and what factors distinguish market winners from losers.

📖 Source & Attribution

All innovations featured are verified winners of Popular Science magazine's "Best of What's New" awards (2010–2019). All descriptions are original summaries; outcome data compiled from public sources. The exercise draws from 34 innovations—17 commercial successes and 17 market failures.

2010 2011 2012 2014 2015 2016 2017 2019

🛠️ How This Game Was Made

I designed and directed this game and I maintain it. The code was written by Claude Fable and Claude Opus 4.7, working to my design and instructions. The artwork is from Gemini. I chose the cases, checked the outcomes against public sources, and approved everything in the game.

✨ Free & Open

💰 Completely Free No subscriptions or paywalls

🔒 No Data Capture The game collects no personal information. Google Analytics counts visitors only if you accept cookies. Change your choice

🔧 Fully Adaptable Take the code and change it for your own teaching (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

This is an open-source project. The whole game is a single HTML file. You are welcome to take it, change the cases, and use your own version in your teaching. The repository is at github.com/ammonsalter-del/Boom-or-Bust.