Playing Lean is a very dynamic simulation game, which is setting you up in a lean innovation mindset. In half a day, the game takes you through revelations and pivots of a startup story. Takeaways are immediately applicable into your everyday business innovation life. Therefore saving you time, money and most importantly, lowering your stress levels.
Play, risk or die
We all know that anyone can read about driving, but only reading the manuals won’t teach you how to drive. There is possibility to upgrade knowledge by learning how to drive in a driving simulator or by playing racing video games. A virtual world offers risk-free environment where “potential” driver is allowed to make wrong decisions. By purpose or not, without damaging a car or causing loss of life.
Playing Lean is somehow “driving” simulator for innovation and Lean Startup. It’s an enjoyable board game where players are “allowed” and somehow forced to make difficult choices without risking their life savings or the future of their workplaces. The worst-case scenario is a humiliating defeat in front of your colleagues which can be quite scary. You can play the game in 4 teams with 2-4 members in each team, so altogether 8 to 16 people can play at once.
The best way to learn the startup mindset
In just a couple of hours of Playing Lean you will learn an effective way to develop new disruptive business ideas. This will save you a lot of time, money, resources and stress. You will gain this knowledge through making mistakes in a controlled environment of a board game, which you can later apply in your daily work. The game is designed as intra-team collaborative, yet inter-team competitive. In about 30 business turns only one of four teams wins with the best use of scarce resources and the ambition to rule the market. In the end, teams share their strategies, mistakes, luck and learning and discuss how they will bring all that learning back to their daily business.
From corporate to startup teams
It is used by development and management teams in mature organizations, independent startup teams and individuals just starting out. It is useful as team building events and strategic conference material. The simulation is based on the main concepts from The Lean Startup (by Eric Ries) and Running Lean (by Ash Maurya).
What will you gain by playing this game
- First, introduce agile and lean principles into your daily business life.
- Second, experience the disruption and dynamics of a fast-paced startup-like. Conquering of customer segments in a very uncertain competitive situation and severely constrained resources.
- Third, update and speed up development and launching of your risky new products and services. Realize how not very lean you actually operate.
- And last, simulate product and customer development of your business idea. Before you do it in real life.
