Playing a Marketing & Sales Game (M&S Game) across 6 countries, in 20 teams with 120 participants! Why? What? And How! In this article we discuss how you, as a business leader, can update and sharpen your organisation's business model in multidisciplinary teams across several countries, all consolidated in an online game!
The Marketing & Sales Game as a tool for business innovation
Business innovation, why should bother? In times where consumer behaviour continuously changes, which is inherent to today's society, offering novel and compelling service propositions has become increasingly important. In doing so, business innovation is a main driver to stay competitive. This is based on the idea that organisations should always understand consumer behaviour and adapt their business model accordingly.
The M&S Game is a real-life and game-based tool that allows organisations to tap into the key aspects of their business model in a safe and novel way. Consisting of several rounds, teams of participants are challenged in understanding target groups, looking at the customer journey with a customer-centric - value-in-use - mindset, define an effective market approach, which is all consolidated in a concrete business plan. The M&S Game challenges cross-disciplinary teams on both hard and soft skills, making it an ideal environment for improving individual and collective skills. Furthermore, as individuals work together in teams, it has proven to act as a great vehicle to improving teamwork capabilities!
The M&S Game can be played fully online!
Talking about business innovation, how does this affect the M&S Game? While the M&S Game can still be played fully 'offline' on premise, recently it has been taken to a next level in that it can be played fully online. Regardless of participant's location, the M&S Game can be properly played using an easily accessible online portal. Each round is introduced by the expert hosts that plenary explain and discuss the relevant theory and background. After that, teams work together to 'crack' each round and achieve the best possible result.
A look and feel at Copenhagen Business School
On the 29th and 30th of October, Marketing professor Ad de Jong invited us for the third time in a row to organise and host the M&S Game. Instead of on premise, we adapted the game to an online version. 120 participants in the Marketing and Creative Industries were being challenged to play the M&S Game during two days and come up with the most creative and feasible ideas to increase value.
The illustrations below show how the plenary session, consisting of theory presentation and discussion, took place.
Individual students left behind some testimonials.
Business leaders and thought leaders are invited to play
Whether you are part of a management team of, for example, a small-medium enterprise, or a non-profit organisation, or a professor at a business school, the M&S Game can be of interest to you. Especially in times where social contact looks different and people are working from home, the online version of the M&S Game might fit your needs well!
Are you interested in further information? Do you want to gain further insight into how the M&S Game can help to refine your business model? Please reach out!
Take a look at our M&S Game page for more information or contact via: Steije Renes (srenes@tnxto.com) and Yasin Sahhar (ysahhar@tnxto.com)