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The playful team

We don’t usually think of play as being an essential part of business innovation. Play looks like an optional extra: something you do after you’ve finished your work, rather than being a part of work itself. The fact that innovation productivity appears to be declining, might suggest a need to become more productively playful. We define 'play' as deploying improvisation and imagination in a business context, to inspire ourselves and others toward more effective exploration of possibilities. Each of these three components - improvisation, imagination, and inspiration - is increasingly important in today’s business environment. The less we can rely on plans, the more we need the mindset and skill of improvisation, to adapt to new situations. Imagination is needed the more an environment becomes less stable. In such an open-ended setting we need to compete on our ability to imagine new products or areas of unsatisfied needs. Inspiration is also required, it's a necessary ingredient for creativity. Both play a crucial role in how a solution to a problem is outlined, what alternatives can be chosen, and how to identify new ways of looking at a problem. In each case, the more our environment departs from orderly stability, the more we need to cultivate play for building a business innovation culture. So let's play and enhance the skills of your team with one of our games. See eight examples of games below - usually we combine games with our INNOmaps.

Lego^® Serious Play^® (LSP) is a powerful tool enabling a creative business process through abstract thinking. The power of LSP is that everybody is able to share knowledge, insights and opinions via the LEGO bricks. It encourages out of the box thinking and allowing participants to build their own metaphors. It is based on the belief that everyone has something valuable to contribute to discussions, decisions, and outcomes. This workshop can take anywhere between 2-4 hours.

The Unicorn Game is an innovation game for business teams. It puts you straight into a startup mindset while disrupting you throughout the entire gaming experience. Throughout the 90 minutes game experience, the players learn how to think like a startup and create incredible innovations. This game experience is all about the power of teams and co-creation. Battling to disrupt industries, players come up with incredible ideas to inspire action back at work.

The goal of The Cover Story Vision is to let go of all restrictions and imagine where you, your product, your customer, even your company will end up without anything holding it back. It inspires big thinking and creativity, helping participants to picture the potential. It does not require any logic; it is solely a creative activity that allows participants to dream of the company’s potential success. This workshop can take anywhere between 2-3 hours.

The Innovation Game enables participants to capture how a product, service or process can improve by identifying barriers and opportunities using an airplane or shop metaphor. Participants collect all the things they hate most about air travel or shopping, and then brainstorm ideas about how to do things better or make the experience better. This game creates a sense of identification and this benefit is of extreme value within an innovation initiative. This game takes 1-2 hours.

You are a member of a space crew scheduled to rendezvous with a mother ship on the lighted surface of the moon. However, due to mechanical difficulties, your own ship was forced to land at a spot 200 miles from the rendezvous point. During re-entry and landing, much of the equipment aboard was damaged. Apart from the ‘fun’ challenge of trying to stay alive, this game can help encourage communication, cooperation and decision making skills. This game takes 45-90 minutes.

In this game you are leading a new creative project competing to built the best business. This game gives an opportunity to practice building an idea into a business, pitching to others, and imagine possibilities from every card. As a storytelling game, the cards don't tell you exactly what to do, but instead, inspire your strategy and pitch. The more you convince others, the more chances you'll have to improve your business. This game takes 1-2 hours.

The cards are designed to spark 'What if?'-thinking and help participants discover blind spots that may be obscuring the way of implementing new ideas. Examples of questions: What game-changing idea have you seen recently?, Imagine you have all the resources you need. What would that enable you to do? This game gives you a fresh perspective on your business and you will find new ways to innovate. This game takes 1-2 hours.

This game combines the best of your favorite board games into a business context where you run your own business and compete, collaborate, and negotiate with other players. Activities are expertly designed to enable you to experience the true challenges of entrepreneurship. You gain knowledge and skills in business, finance, marketing, negotiation, planning, critical thinking, analysis, decision-making and more! This game takes 1-2 hours.