BUSINESS

Save the City

Structured brainstorming and idea generation to supply a city under blockade

SIMULATION OVERVIEW

Sector Alpha is a district of approximately 2 million people fully encircled by a hostile power, Sector Omega. Sector Omega has severed every supply route — land, sea, and air. Sector Alpha has 30 days of supplies on hand. You serve on the governing council as one of its advisors. The council needs ideas — many ideas, of every kind — for how to keep the city alive. The conventional options (military breakout, diplomatic settlement, gradual capitulation) are either off the table or unacceptable. The council needs creative thinking under hard constraints. The simulation runs in three rounds: ROUND 1 — INDIVIDUAL idea generation. You work alone. Generate as many ideas as possible, of every kind, across every vector you can imagine. Outlandish ideas are welcome at this stage. ROUND 2 — COLLABORATIVE SCAMPER synthesis. You join your team. Together you consolidate everyone's individual ideas and apply the SCAMPER framework (Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to other use, Eliminate, Reverse) to mutate and refine the top five candidate options. ROUND 3 — COLLABORATIVE final strategy. Decisive intelligence arrives on the feasibility of each option. Your team must select a single final strategy and account for two viable alternatives. The simulation is designed to surface a single observable pattern: does the transition from individual work to group work CREATE value (the team's top five contains mutations no individual brought into the room) or DESTROY value (the team's top five is narrower or less creative than the union of individual lists)?

Structured BrainstormingSynthesis

SIM PARAMETERS

TRACK

Business

ROUNDS

DURATION

TEAM MODEL

All teams, same materials

POSTURE

CRISIS

AUDIENCE

MBA students; intelligence and international security students; any program teaching structured brainstorming and group decision-making

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Apply structured brainstorming techniques to generate ideas under crisis conditions

Use the SCAMPER technique to refine raw ideas and select the strongest candidates

Generate creative ideas as an individual and within a team to solve a problem

Mitigate groupthink and anchoring through isolated initial idea generation

Navigate team dynamics to synthesize multiple concepts into a cohesive, stress-tested strategic plan

Recognize when the transition from individual to group work creates value vs. destroys value

HOW IT RUNS

Briefing

Participants receive a scenario overview and their team assignment. Facilitator sets context and opens the document room.

Document Review

Teams examine scenario documents in the shared document room. Each round releases new intelligence as the situation develops.

Analysis & Submission

Teams complete a structured analytic worksheet applying Structured Brainstorming and Synthesis, then submit their assessment.

Stakeholder Response

An AI-driven decision-maker responds to each team's assessment, reflecting how a real principal would react to the analysis provided.

Debrief

Teams compare their analysis against an expert benchmark. AI coaching surfaces analytical gaps, cognitive biases, and key insights.

WHO IT IS FOR

MBA & Business Programs

Builds competitive intelligence, market analysis, and strategic decision-making skills through scenario-based team exercises.

Corporate Training

Develops analytical reasoning and collaborative intelligence skills in business strategy, risk, or competitive intelligence teams.

Executive Education

Challenges senior leaders to apply structured analysis to high-stakes business decisions under time pressure.

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