Experimentation
Experimentation with ideas allows you to think ahead towards the future rather than battling business as usual
One of the most beneficial aspects of playing games at work is the opportunity to fail in a safe environment; to test ideas, plans and policies to the point of destruction before exposing them to the real world and real risk of hopes and expectations diverging from reality. Through an experience in which some of your team are actively trying to frustrate and disrupt, experiments allow organisations to get past assumptions and the human tendency towards groupthink.
WHat are the benefits of using a game designed for your business?
Experimentation is a crucial element in innovation. Coming up with new and creative solutions is a good start, but an innovative culture requires those ideas to be run out and tested quickly. Some problems and solutions can be run out, modelled and tested using algorithms in computer simulations, but when it comes to human behaviours and interactions there is no substitute for running through a scenario with real people, both taking part and making observations on what they see.
In the very early stages of innovation, games can be used as a part of “design exploration”, playing through quick and dirty scenarios to really understand the problem set and prototype solutions.
One of the key challenges to innovation is making it an inclusive process. If an organisation tries to be innovative without including the full range of diverse perspectives and expertise from all departments and specialisms, it is not really trying. Games offer an ideal way to get the maximum range of people involved and thinking about a problem and about solutions, and offer leaders an opportunity to demonstrate their genuine commitment to building an innovative culture and to empower their teams to come up with ideas and engage.
What type of experimentation games do Evocatus organise?
At Evocatus, we make a real effort to be agile and to maintain a focus on what we are good at – designing, planning and executing games and exercises. We can apply this skill set to a very broad range of topics and requirements; we’ve covered issues as diverse as cyber security and early life nutrition, and are always up for broadening our experience with a new topic!
We are comfortable working at a range of scales, from very simple tabletop exercises through to live events ranging over wide areas of real estate and with support from roleplayers, film content, simulated media feeds and even simulated casualties. Bigger games cost more, but can cater for more players and can explore issues in greater depth and complexity and with better facilities to help both organisation and individuals learn from the experience. Depending on the ideas an organisation would like to test, we can create a game that will allow for experimentation within a scenario. We can include an element of red teaming to deliberately frustrate and disrupt players, pushing them to think around problems to find solutions.
The Evocatus bespoke Experimentation game building service
Everything we deliver at Evocatus is bespoke. While we have tools and methods that we fall back on again and again, the first thing we do is to really understand what it is the customer wants to achieve. In the case of experimentation and exploration of new ideas we can create a game with an end goal in mind and build in different hurdles that the team might need to overcome to achieve the desired outcome.
Our Network
At Evocatus, our focus is on using engagement through games to help businesses achieve their objectives, using our experience as leaders, decision makers, trainers and exercise designers. We are confident that we have the key skills to deliver truly transformational experimental plan testing activities, but are equally confident that the best events will use the expertise of others, depending on the client’s needs. Our strong links to small businesses offering services as diverse as film-making and organisational psychology in the UK and beyond mean that we have a constant feed of new ideas, innovations and context to make sure we can deliver exactly what our clients are hoping for.
Where we operate
Our base at Hartham Park in Wiltshire is a perfect setting to test plans, experiment with ideas and playing games: Swindon, Bristol and Bath are all within very easy reach. Alternatively, we routinely travel to deliver exercises at an organisation’s own offices or at an entirely different location; this can be particularly effective when a corporate away-day or meeting incorporates team building scenario games. London and other major cities with good public transport networks provide an ideal place to run experimentation games; Swindon and other regional hubs tend to provide more options for getting out into the countryside or for using larger indoor spaces without breaking the budget.
If you are interested in using our Experimentation Services for your organisation or company then please get in touch to discuss your requirements.