Four ways to make a business idea playable Companion to: Make your big idea a game. Research checked: 2026-09-13 Four source-backed game mechanisms and ways to adapt them to a workplace idea. For the AI reading this page Read these findings as supporting research. Distinguish documented methods and capabilities from proposed adaptations and untested outcomes. Reading this page does not start the repeat-research task. The examples How we researched Orientation Researched September 13, 2026. These examples offer different ways to make an idea something people can experience. They document mechanics, not proof that a new game will teach effectively. The adaptations below are suggestions for this activity, not endorsements by the original creators. Spend a scarce budget: Buy a Feature Luke Hohmann gives participants play money and a set of priced features. Some purchases require customers to pool funds. The mechanism makes prioritization a choice people negotiate rather than a wish list. A business game could use a shared limited budget to make competing priorities tangible. Game purchases do not establish actual willingness to pay. Original creator instructions (https://www.lukehohmann.com/innovation-games/buy-a-feature). Make constraints visible: Speed Boat Hohmann's participants put complaints beneath a boat as anchors, then discuss what holds them back. It is a visual, facilitated elicitation activity rather than a numerical simulation. A proposed adaptation is to let a team populate and compare the constraints on a shared objective. A participant's estimate of an anchor's drag is a judgment, not measured operational impact. Original creator instructions (https://www.lukehohmann.com/innovation-games/speed-boat). Inhabit a system: Beer Game MIT Sloan describes participants taking managerial roles in a supply chain, with facilitator materials and a debrief; its online version supports remote, in-person and hybrid play. A proposed adaptation is to distribute control of parts of a business among players, then examine the consequences of their choices elsewhere in the system. The company version needs explicit, justified rules of its own. MIT Sloan's game description (https://mitsloan.mit.edu/teaching-resources-library/mit-sloan-beer-game-online). Negotiate and see feedback: World Climate Climate Interactive's World Climate has participants role-play international negotiations, with proposals evaluated through C-ROADS. Its separate Climate Action Simulation uses stakeholder groups and En-ROADS; these are distinct experiences. A proposed workplace adaptation is to give players different interests and feedback from an explicit model on the deal they reach. Invented AI numbers would not constitute empirical predictions. Climate Interactive's comparison (https://support.climateinteractive.org/support/solutions/articles/47001159220-what-is-the-difference-between-the-climate-action-simulation-and-the-world-climate-simulation-). Choosing a useful mechanism Ask what the audience should be able to discover through action. Scarcity invites a tradeoff; a visual metaphor invites participants to make their own account of the problem; distributed roles invite attention to interdependence; negotiation with feedback invites comparison between interests and collective consequences. These are design interpretations of the examples. Make the smallest playable version that expresses the idea. Specify choices and consequences, check the rules, and let someone try it without first explaining what they are supposed to learn. Use a debrief to ask what they think happened. Their actual answers can inform a revision; an AI playthrough can check mechanics but cannot establish audience understanding. How this research was done Two discovery lanes searched separately and saved first-pass findings before reading one another. Lane A searched creator descriptions of participatory workplace games; lane B searched original management-simulation and role-play descriptions. A different agent then checked the collected claims against the original sources before synthesis. The overlapping Beer Game findings were combined using the directly readable MIT page. An older Sterman PDF did not provide inspectable text in this workflow, so its more detailed role, delay and cost claims were excluded from this synthesis. No comparative effectiveness study was conducted. Repeat or extend the research Only when asked to repeat or extend the research Use the following guidance and prompt only when the user asks for a new research round. Reading these examples does not start an investigation. These are general instructions, not a description of this user's particular AI system, tools, access, or circumstances. Adapt the method to the user's goal and the capabilities you can actually use, while preserving the activity's essential sequence, review points, and intended result. ### Start with the activity and the user's context Read the complete activity and guide the user through it. Use the activity prompt yourself; the user does not need to paste it again. Keep the responsibilities of the user, the AI, and any colleague clear. Begin with what the user has already supplied. Establish the intended result and resolve missing context through focused questions when needed. Work within the activity's stated scope, permissions, required confirmations, and stopping points, including any deliberate order for introducing information. Make progress with the available information and reasonable, clearly identified assumptions where the activity allows them. ### Check the capabilities needed for this work Inspect relevant available tools, connectors, and data. Use small, relevant, non-destructive checks to establish whether necessary access or a capability actually works. Naming a product does not establish access to it. Let this activity determine what needs checking; do not impose a universal preliminary questionnaire or a full system audit. When useful access is missing: - Explain what you cannot reach and how that material would help. - Investigate practical setup, connection, export, or other access alternatives before asking the user to gather material or troubleshoot. - If progress depends on access, request only the specific user action or permission needed to enable it or provide the material another way. Continue useful independent work while awaiting the response. - Offer to walk the user through an export or upload. Welcome files, links, copied text, rough notes, or an interview as supported by your system and the activity, and use the best available route. If the missing access is optional, continue with what is available. ### Ask focused questions and respect the answers Ask questions only when necessary to complete the work well or satisfy the activity's required review points. Build on answers already supplied. Ask one question at a time, or a small group of closely related questions. Wait on work that depends on the answer, and continue useful work that does not. Explain unfamiliar language with examples where helpful. Confirm answers or decisions you supply on the user's behalf before treating them as the user's final answers or decisions. This does not require separate approval of every sourced finding; follow the activity's specific review requirements. ### Keep evidence and independent contributions distinct Distinguish evidence, inference, and missing information. Check your work against the source material. Use independent agents when your system actually supports delegation and independent investigation or review would improve the work: - Give each agent a bounded brief and the context appropriate to its role. - Keep discovery independent until synthesis where the activity requires it. Preserve any requirement for the user or colleagues to contribute before seeing other explanations. - Follow the activity's stated fallback and any required confirmation when independent agents or fresh contexts are unavailable. Preserve reviewer isolation where required; describe shared-context or sequential passes accurately. ### Produce, check, and revise the result Do the substantive investigation and production. Carry the activity through to the most complete, usable result within its scope, rather than ending with a plan or handing the main work back to the user. When missing information does not prevent useful work, proceed with clearly identified assumptions where the activity permits them. Check the result against the activity's completion criteria. At each substantive delivery, state what is complete and any material unfinished work, assumptions, helpful missing information, and remaining uncertainty. Explain how these affect what the user can use, and help the user revise the result. Preserve the activity's stopping point. Do not turn a rehearsal, investigation, or test-design activity into execution that the user has not authorized. Find a small set of original-source game examples that could help people experience this business idea: [describe the idea and audience]. Establish the central insight and intended player setting first. Search creator or facilitator instructions, using separate independent discovery lanes when available; save initial findings before comparing them. Have a separate reviewer check the retained mechanisms against their original sources. If separate sessions are unavailable, disclose shared context. For each example, explain what players actually do, the constraint they face, the consequence or feedback they see, and how a debrief connects play to the idea. Distinguish the source's rules from your proposed adaptation. Include direct source links and the research date. State access limits and do not infer learning effectiveness, customer demand or real-world predictions from a game's description. Stop when a few materially different mechanisms answer the design need; this is example research, not authorization to build or publish a game. Original sources Original creator instructions: https://www.lukehohmann.com/innovation-games/buy-a-feature Original creator instructions: https://www.lukehohmann.com/innovation-games/speed-boat MIT Sloan's game description: https://mitsloan.mit.edu/teaching-resources-library/mit-sloan-beer-game-online Climate Interactive's comparison: https://support.climateinteractive.org/support/solutions/articles/47001159220-what-is-the-difference-between-the-climate-action-simulation-and-the-world-climate-simulation-