Changing the Game from ‘Reading’ to ‘Speeding’

I came across Spritz, a ‘Game Changer’ new app  (launching on the Samsung platform soon) on Elite Daily.  It’s a new technology that has embraced the constraint of time, and figured out a way to help us all read more, a lot faster.

We know from our research into how Challengers innovate, that they often start with what we call a ‘Propelling Question’ — a question phrased in such a way that it juxtaposes a bold ambition right next to a seemingly limiting constraint, and therefore propels us to look for and create a breakthrough solution.

So perhaps the folks at Spritz started with the propelling question: “How might we make it possible for anyone to read an entire novel in just 90-minutes?” or even more ambitiously, ‘How might it be possible to read 1000 pages in just one day?”

Their answer: An app powered by an algorithm that streams any text across your device in a single line, and inserting a single red letter in each word to get our eyes to focus on the Optimal Recognition Point (ORP) to quickly decipher the word.

In doing so, they seem to have changed the category from just ‘reading’ to making it a game of ‘speeding’ — how fast can you read?

In today’s world of increasing ‘gameification’, it will be interesting to watch if this new technology can revitalize the publishing industry by making it more fun (or even competitive) to read and to get more people reading more content than ever before. That sure sounds like a bold, challenging ambition to us.