Minefield

Minefield explores the organisational and commercial benefits of information sharing in competitive marketplaces. It examines the need for openness and trust if information sharing is to succeed and can be used to stimulate dialogue around opportunities for information sharing within project teams, divisions or departments and business networks.

In a commercial environment business knowledge is the basis upon which critical decisions are made. Businesses always try to access the best business knowledge available to them, although the cost of accessing this knowledge may be high. Organisations certainly do not want to waste money on information that already exists within the business, or on solutions that could be achieved without additional investment.

This exercise explores issues around the acquisition of Business Knowledge and the costs of poor Knowledge Management. It also explores inter-group relationships, including the need to build trust in the integrity and competence of others in order to feel confident in sharing information and the willingness of individuals to ‘give away’ something they have invested in. Minefield also explores the different attitudes of individuals and teams to risk. 

Learning objective:

The commercial implications of acquiring Business Knowledge & poor Knowledge Management across organisations

• The conditions under which information sharing might be routinely passed across internal organisational boundaries for the benefit of the organisation

• Issues around risk-management, where decisions have to be made that have significant budget implications

• The criteria for successful collaboration and communication amongst different teams

Activity Contents:

Gameboard, 64 x Magnetic pieces, Facilitator manual, Scoresheets, Carry case 

Four small teams are placed in corners of the working areas and identified as Teams A,B,C and D. Their individual objective is to maximise a given budget by spending as little as possible and gaining a large bonus for completing their task objective.

The required information is contained on a master game board, and by spending budget, each team can obtain information from the master game board. Each team is asked to maximise its score, but no specific mention is made of competition or collaboration.

If teams compete rather than collaborate they cannot obtain a positive score - the individual team scores will reflect the absolute degree of cooperation.