Serious games effective in teaching (open) innovation & management

Serious games effective in teaching (open) innovation & management

Recently, an article about the effect of serious games on teaching and learning the essentials of (open) innovation and innovation management has been published on the ssrn. The authors have researched a group of students from different nationalities playing a game in the context of an education course. By playing the game, they had the following goals:

  • Creating a shared experience of social dynamics and the paradox of co-opetition for the students;
  • Enable critical reflection on social dynamics of co-opetition based on this experience;
  • Experience-based learning — enable the students to apply what they learned from their reflection and experience through iteration;
  • Create deeper understanding of open innovation;
The study uses a series of plays and discussions and compares the results of these sessions with game theory. They round up with several interesting conclusions:
  • We argued that play can be a source of creativity, imagination and fun in a teaching setting (cf. Kolb & Kolb, 2010).
  • We found evidence that playful games can help to create such an experience through interactive experience and simple simulation — thereby helping the students to better understand the theory behind open collaborative innovation (Bogers, 2012; Chesbrough, 2003; Chesbrough et al., 2006; Dahlander & Gann, 2010; Nalebuff & Brandenburger, 1997).
  • Moreover, playful games allow understanding open innovation as interplay of complex processes of relating, social capital, and institutions (Adler & Kwon, 2002; Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998; Rolfstam, 2009; Searle, 2005; Stacey & Griffin, 2005).
  • They thus allow us to get a more holistic understanding of the complex social dynamics that emerge when people have to deal with novelty. (Bogers & Sproedt, 2012).
Two of the most used innovation games in teaching (professionals) and higher education are: