Hailed as the World’s Leading Business Strategist, award-winning professional speaker, management consultant and business strategist, Scott Steinberg is the creator of The Future is Yours, a new board game that can teach anyone to be more creative, innovative and resilient. Among today’s best-known trends experts and futurists, he’s been a strategic adviser to over 2000 brands, and is the bestselling author of “The New Rules of Business Development;” “Think Like a Futurist” and “Make Change Work for You.”  His website is FuturistsSpeakers.com.

With hybrid event formats on the rise, meeting planners increasingly on the lookout for more dynamic conference sessions, and attendees’ attention spans shrinking, event content programmers are increasingly looking to implement more interactive educational opportunities. The practice of gamification — introducing game-based mechanics into learning and development efforts of every type — offers a means of addressing these needs, and readily boosting audience engagement.

To adapt to these shifting industry trends and teach audiences the skills that they need to thrive in fast-changing business environments, it’s clear that new learning approaches and models are called for. Looking to meet the challenge, we’ve designed a new series of board games designed for play at meetings and events, including What’s the Future of Finance?, What’s the Future of Insurance? and What’s The Future of Healthcare? Each invites players to tackle real-world challenges (labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, etc.) in a more approachable and exciting fashion than traditional classroom offerings. After sharing and hosting training sessions for hundreds of brands as futurist keynote speakers, here’s what we’ve learned about creating more impactful meetings and events from these efforts.

Human Connections Are Critical

Both event hosts and attendees are always looking for inviting ways to break the ice at meetings or conventions – and informal, team-based challenges allow audiences of all backgrounds, roles and skill levels to more readily socialize and participate. Before starting to play our games, for instance, audiences are separated into tables of five to eight, with chairs divvied up amongst folks from different areas of the business or larger industry, most of whom have had little, if any, prior interaction. As play progresses, conversations and brainstorming that happen around these tables provide a handy way to bridge the gap between generations, functions and departments, invite everyone to participate, and present a ready excuse for conversation. Moreover, by giving everybody at the table a chance to shine and show their individuals talents, it reminds participants that no matter how accomplished or experienced that we are, that we can all learn from one another – and that any given individual’s practical skills may in actuality extend far beyond those we see them get to use in their day-to-day job role.

Hands-On Learning Is Best

Having served as futurist keynote speakers and thought leaders for thousands of brands, we’re no strangers to delivering formal keynotes and masterclasses. But from an audience perspective, learning by doing and being tasked with solving realistic challenges in practical contexts vastly boosts attendee learning, takeaway and retention far beyond anything that listening to an expert pontificate on-stage for 45 to 90 minutes could provide. Moreover, by introducing practical constraints to interactive training exercises, such as specific scenarios to play through and time limits, participants are forced to focus on what matters most: Finding practical ways to solve any given problem as quickly as possible. It helps sharpen conventiongoers’ focus and eliminates the distractions that can so often lead to “paralysis by analysis” in everyday environs. Likewise, engagement in meaningful activities and interactions also prove far ‘stickier’ in the mind of the viewer, leading to lasting memories and “a-ha” moments whose impact resonates far beyond day-of session programming.

Everyone Is An Innovator

In the What’s the Future of…? games, there’s no right or wrong way to solve a problem. Rather, there are many possible strategic tacks to take, and the journey of how you reach a workable approach is more important than the ultimate destination. That’s because not only does the game remind players that innovation isn’t the exclusive domain of any role or department, and that every working professional is able to be more creative when we simply make a point to exercise our imagination more actively. It also actively exposes players to others’ ways of thinking, processing ideas and tackling problems. And by watching how others solve challenges, players can discover new strategic tools and techniques to add to their own toolbox. In other words, play reminds participants that great ideas can come from anywhere, anytime – and that we all have something to learn from one another. In fact, one of the greatest joys of training sessions is watching the most junior interns and senior executives pick up hints, tips and ideas from one another.

Asking Questions is Paramount

Trade secret: A futurist doesn’t actually predict the future. Rather, by studying the state of the market and society, what we do is identify emerging trends – and challenge our clients to think about how these breaking developments might impact their organization. As part of game-based learning programs, players are naturally forced to brainstorm, assess and advance or dismiss ideas in an accelerated period of time. On one hand, that requires them to distill challenges down to their base essence and think about how to better manage limited resources, including not just finances, but also capabilities, manpower and time. On the other, it causes them to get in the habit of asking more questions, more routinely, and in more rapid-fire fashion: Exactly as a professional futurist might do. In effect, play is centered around asking more what if? questions – just as successful innovators would in a corporate setting.

Permission to Experiment Matters

As a starting point in gameplay sessions, it may interest you to learn that we put players in charge of fictional companies and brands whose profiles look remarkably similar to their own employer, minus the actual branding. Fascinatingly, this simple shift in perspective effectively gives folks permission to speak up and voice ideas, insights and opinions that may otherwise never be floated or fly under the radar in a more formal corporate setting. Moreover, we also ask players to whiteboard any concepts, ideas, strategies and trends that they come across or come up with as part of their discussions. On the back end, these points of interest or concern often serve as fuel for new corporate ventures, pilot programs or innovation initiatives going forward. In effect, whether they consciously realize it or not, players get the chance to examine and explore their current work and organizational scenario from fresh perspectives — and may produce actual game-changing ideas in turn.

All that being said, it’s clear that not only do players learn best by doing, versus simply hearing a presenter talk at them. Offering more interactivity in training exercises helps serve as a useful icebreaker and networking activity, and creates a more welcoming atmosphere for meeting participants. Whatever training tools and strategies you use to build a conference or convention program going forward, we can’t stress the point enough: Audiences learn most effectively from one another, and when they’re given the means and methodologies to arrive at their own solutions. I&FMM.