Playing: it’s a work thing
by Andrea Vitali from H-FARM Innovation
Among the activities we design for clients are business games, web series and treasure hunts made to educate and entertain in an unconventional way.
Learn more about what we do in our Innovation division.
Can playing help a company improve its strategic planning, problem solving and overall creativity? As you may have guessed, yes. 😄
We are so convinced of it that playful activities have become along the years a huge part of our digital transformation projects, leveraging on our 15-year experience on corporate learning and people empowerment.
As technologies, markets and industries evolve lightning fast, corporations need out-of-the-box approaches to face existing and unforeseen challenges. From alternate reality games to treasure hunts, from business simulations to interactive storytelling, we use these tools to guide them in this direction.
Some examples:
Paperleaves, a digital game we created for the Oncology division of Novartis Italia to integrate startup dynamics in the corporate culture.
For 3 weeks, 280 employees collaborated on a platform developed by us, working like a real startup: they physically created the products (paper leaves) and put them on sale in a virtual market, whose rules and purchase criteria were established beforehand by our facilitators and never shared with the participants.
Loop, a game designed as a roll-out tool for a new organizational structure. A multidisciplinary team of colleagues had to effectively collaborate to bring a new product or service to market, dealing with a low budget and limited time.
Startup Adventure, an experience halfway between a fictional narrative frame, as happens in Alternate Reality Games, and a business simulation. Novartis Oncology’s employees were encouraged to develop a startup mindset by putting themselves to the test with the launch of a new products and all the related startup dynamics. The intriguing aspect is that we created an imaginary CEO who shared video-messages and other communications with the teams from her imaginary but real email address.
Risky Games, a simulation and team building exercise for top managers and board members to find an agreement on strategic investments, impersonating two companies competing on the same unpredictable market, with very little information available. Implementing Agile and Lean principles was the key to success. Among the clients who tried it are Henkel and Generali.
Treasure hunts carried out through paper guides + text messages, combinations of alternate reality games-TV series-online platforms and multiple-choice quizzes inserted in stories for employee onboarding are other experiences we designed: find here a complete recap (in Italian).
