Business game and synthesis

One of the challenges the case company has recognized in their organization is what they call engineer mindset. On many occasions such as product development, it helps to think through before the actions starts. But it is also challenging mentality for the concepting phase. Commonly new ideas are turned down due to the lack of factual evi-dence behind them. Therefore, the new service development that resulted from the in-terview phase of this thesis needed a follow up action that would support low level con-cepting and brainstorming.

For this reason, the adapted version of the business game concept by Laine et al.

(2012). was selected. The adapted version was designed to allocate and evaluate the 14 service proposals that were created by the researcher based on the interviews of the thesis. These 14 service proposals were presented as business game playing cards. The other key aspect of the business game was the four business game compa-nies that were selected by the researcher. Those four compacompa-nies were presented for the players of the business game through overview which had key information of the company and through deeper data such as annual reports and other public documenta-tions.

Business game playing cards

The concept of the business game playing cards was to create an informative docu-ment that would describe the presented service with few sentences. The other side of the playing card contained the estimated requirements of the service. The require-ments of the service were divided into actions, business model and organization.

These requirements could be then used to describe needed actions, changes for busi-ness model and operations related to the organization.

Business game companies

The four business game companies were selected based on the answers got from the interviews of the thesis. Three of the four companies were unanimously selected by all the interviewees. The fourth company was selected outside the current customers of the case company. This selection was done to guide the executives of the case com-pany to think of the possibilities of the pre-sale services in lead generation, since the lack of pre-sale service were mentioned multiple times during the interviews.

These four business game companies were first familiarized by the researcher and then the key data of each company was compiled as an overview. This overview was used as a main decision-making platform during the game. The supportive data such as annual report was collected of each company and made available during the busi-ness game.

The business game

The actual business game was played on 21.1.2022 by the CEO, COO and the re-searcher of the thesis who acted also as the facilitator of the game. The business game used following rules and agenda:

1. The game will consist of four (4) rounds. Each round has its own game com-pany that is being evaluated.

2. The purpose of each round is to:

a. Get familiar with the game company through the overview and additional documentation such as annual reports. Facilitator’s responsibility is to provide sufficient information for the players.

b. Decide as a group which playing card(s) are suitable for this specific game company. (NOTE! There is no need to use any cards if none is sufficient for the specific game company. Same cards can be re-used on other rounds of the game)

c. Facilitator will document the results of each round before moving on to the next round or before the game ends.

3. The purpose of the game is to allocate the service proposals (playing cards) and evaluate the suitability of them. Based on the results, the facilitator will compile overview of suitable services that have been allocated to at least one game company. This overview will also consist of the estimations of require-ments to make the services possible through actions, business model changes and organization structure related operations.

The results and synthesis of the business game

During each of the four rounds of the business game, allocation of service proposals was made amongst the players of the game. The service proposal allocation of each round went as follows:

1. During the first round four of the fourteen proposals were allocated.

2. During the second round five of the fourteen proposals were allocated.

3. During the third round eleven of the fourteen proposals were allocated.

4. During the fourth round four of the fourteen proposals were allocated.

Four service proposals were allocated during three different rounds, which was the highest allocation rate. Two of the service proposals were not allocated at all. The spe-cific allocation rates and relations can be seen from the table 3 shown below.

Table 3. Service proposal allocation during the business game.

Since the rules of the business game stated that the allocation of each proposal needs be done as a group decision, a best practice was formed during the game. For this game the best practice was that each of the players first placed the cards they felt to fit for the game company, and then described why they made such decision. If the players had different opinions about proposal allocation, a debate was arranged and facilitated by the researched. By the end of the debate the unanimous decision was formed. With this best practice different opinions were presented, and the final decision was decided based on proper statements and deep conversations.