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Serious Games To Experiment Business Models

Canvas Brokers by Ranj Serious Games the best Business Model Canvas game

Early June, six teams of professional game developers gathered in Amsterdam for a three-day bootcamp.

The Business Model Canvas: The Game bootcamp was organized by Business Models Inc and Dutch Game Garden and six different game studios got the assignment to develop a Serious Game based on the Business Model Canvas, by Alex Osterwalder, a method for mapping business strategy that has gained popularity in recent years.

The game concept had to make clear how the various building blocks in a business model are connected, thus enabling companies to safely experiment with their business model.

The teams were supported by innovation managers from various companies who were invited to attend, give feedback and follow the development process. On the last day of the event, game developers presented the playable prototypes they had developed.

Three professional judges –Alex Osterwalder, Patrick van der Pijl and Erik van der Pluijm (both Business Models Inc.) and JP van Seventer (Dutch Game Garden) - chose Canvas Brokers by team Ranj as the best Business Model Canvas game. 

What If Scenarios

The basis of Ranj’s Canvas Brokers concept is crowdsourcing. In the game, players present their business model canvasses. Besides the maintenance of their own business model, they also trade in stock of other business models. Each business model is represented by a building. The more shares a business model sells, the higher its building gets. Competitors and community members can use 'what if' scenarios to address the weaknesses of a business model and to try to decrease the sales of shares in successful canvasses.