Each table runs its own company. Each company has its own goals, its own resources, and its own pressures. But no company can hit its targets without trading and cooperating with the others.
What looks like a business simulation is actually a study in how people behave at the boundary between their team and everyone else’s.
What the game is
Ripple Effect is a cross-functional collaboration simulation. Participants manage companies at their tables, making decisions about resource allocation, strategic trade-offs, and inter-company relationships. Every table has different assets and different objectives — meaning success requires negotiating mutually beneficial arrangements with groups whose goals don’t perfectly align with your own.
The game puts pressure on something most training ignores: the gap between knowing collaboration matters and actually doing it when it costs something.
What it reveals
Ripple Effect surfaces how people navigate the tension between local and collective success.
You see who optimises for their table’s numbers at the expense of the broader system, and who builds relationships that create shared value. Who negotiates transparently and who plays games with information. How teams respond when a carefully laid plan gets disrupted by another group’s decision. Whether people treat cross-functional relationships as transactions or as ongoing investments.
The debrief focuses directly on what it takes to work well across teams — based on the specific behaviours that just played out in the room.
Who it’s for
Ripple Effect is designed for organisations where cross-functional collaboration is a genuine challenge. It works well for leadership teams from different functions who need to improve how they work together, for enterprise leadership programmes, and for any cohort where the development goal is breaking down silos.
It’s particularly effective when paired with real data about where collaboration is breaking down in the organisation — the game creates a shared experience that makes those conversations easier to have honestly.
Logistics
- Group size: 16 to 60 participants
- Duration: 3 to 4 hours including debrief
- Format: In-person
- Facilitated by: Arvindh Sundar