Creativity & Change
Lead your organization through 5 years of disruption, creative problem-solving, and transformative change. Make strategic decisions, adapt to unexpected events, and build a culture of innovation.
Inside Innovation Lab
Screens from a class in progress. Click any screen to see it full size.
The Innovation Lab drops student teams into the senior leadership seat at an established mid-size company that has slipped behind on innovation. Professors pick from five industry tracks — SaaS (NovaTech), Healthcare (Meridian), Financial Services (Crestline), Retail (Harbor & Main), or Manufacturing (Apex Industrial) — so the disruption narrative fits the course. Over 5 simulated years (played across 5 weeks by default, 8- or 14-week formats optional), teams sense the need for change, generate creative solutions under real constraints, build stakeholder buy-in, prototype and pivot when disruption hits, and scale sustainable innovation. Multiple-choice answers, budget splits, sliders and Year 4's scale, pivot or kill calls move four scoring pillars — Innovation, Adaptability, Stakeholder Trust, Financial Health — weighted 30/25/25/20 into a pillar composite. In Year 2 the budget split becomes an innovation portfolio: a core, an adjacent and a transformational bet against the company's named disruptor, plus pilots and adoption. Each bet has hidden odds drawn once per class and pays years later if it works; pilots give an honest read before the Year 4 calls, and a bet that works pays only as far as the organization has adopted the new way. The team number is the Innovation Score: 60% the pillar composite and 40% Business Results (revenue against a ghost company that funded nothing, plus the vitality index). Each year's events land on the teams, usually at the decisions deadline, which opens an Adapt window (24 hours unless the professor sets an Adapt deadline). Each event comes with two or three responses written for the company: its harm always lands, and the response the team chooses before the year is scored decides how much of the harm it relieves, on which pillars, and how much of the event's upside it captures (no response: the full harm and no upside). In the window teams may change up to 2 answers (no bonus for changing: the final answer is the one scored) or keep one with a one-line reason that names the year's event (15+ words; a small Adaptability credit, at most twice a year), and the year is scored when it closes. After each scored year an LLM Critic, the Innovation Committee, reviews the team's portfolio, evidence, calls, event responses and written work (memos and short portfolio rationales, which earn no points themselves) in 2-4 paragraphs; its 0-10 score of the written work moves next year's Stakeholder Trust by up to 3 points. Each student's grade is 70% team score and 30% personal score, built from their own on-time reflections and their share of the team's work. With optional light team roles (CEO, Chief Innovation Officer, Finance Lead, People Lead), each owning the decision questions of set years, the post-decision reflection is written from the role and the 30% becomes 20% role work and 10% personal score.
Share this with your team— printable one-pager for a chair or procurement./for-your-team/innovation-labYour company faces declining market signals, rising customer complaints, and aggressive competitors. Identify which signals matter and diagnose the real problem before it is too late.
Generate innovative solutions under budget, time, and cultural constraints. Split the innovation budget across core, adjacent and transformational bets, pilots and adoption, and set how ambitious the transformational bet is.
Pitch your vision to skeptical stakeholders. Navigate resistance from middle management, address investor concerns, and build a coalition for change. Four named leaders remember how you treated them, and their trust sets how fast your new businesses are adopted.
Read your pilot evidence and make a scale, pivot or kill call on each bet. Handle unexpected setbacks — a key supplier drops out, regulations change, or a competitor launches first — and update your calls on new evidence.
Implement your innovation across the entire organization. Manage culture clashes, training gaps, and feedback loops. Prove that your change initiative can endure beyond the initial excitement.
A walkthrough from Jeff Forgrave, who built Boardroom Rivals.
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