There are five rounds to this game.  You can play as many times as you want.  There are no good outcomes in the game, but some outcomes are worse than others.  Some outcomes lead to game over before you get to round 5.  Others let you complete the game to see what happens next.

The purpose of the game is to explore the types of choices we make in business, over a period of time, highlighting the weaknesses that many entrepreneurs have.  We have focussed on four business outcomes that are not ‘ideal’ outcomes: bankruptcy, over success, break even, or loss of ethics to compromise for success. 

Bankruptcy is when you go out of business because you have spent too much money and don’t have enough money coming in to cover the expenditure.  Over success is when you grow too quickly and cannot provide enough goods or services to your customers as you have taken on more business than you can handle – this ultimately leads to failure as you do not get any repeat business and need to give refunds to people who have paid.  Break even is when your business ticks along ok but is only just covering its costs and not really earning you a living so you feel perpetually poor and cannot take a decent income out the business.  Loss of ethics is when you compromise your values and beliefs to make business decisions that are unethical but are likely to result in good money coming in.

Equally there four personality tendencies that can occur when we lose our balance: burnt out, isolated narcissist, bored now or control freak.    Burnt out is when you will work so hard at what you are doing to succeed that you literally burn out of energy and become ill.  Isolated narcissist is when you believe in what you are doing so much you refuse to take on board feedback from other points of view, and isolate yourself from anyone who doesn’t agree with you.  Bored now is when you find the excitement and drive in setting up the business is the key for you and once things are established you get bored and can’t really be bothered to carry on.  Control freak is when you feel you need to do everything yourself, cannot delegate to anyone, overly manage anyone doing anything for you, and need to feel 100% in control of everything to do with the business.

Good luck – see what happens.  The game will randomly select some options for you to choose from in response to five scenarios.  The range of options will change each time you play so you can play multiple times to get different outcomes.  Make a note of the personality tendency and business outcome that you select each time to see if patterns arise.

Once you have played several times, list 5 key learning points for you from playing the game. Consider these with your teacher/facilitator in terms of what they mean for you following an entrepreneurial pathway going forwards in your career.  For example, did you continually select certain combinations or categories of outcomes?  Did you find some options much worse than others?  Did you find it hard to make up your mind when faced with choices that you didn’t like?