Workshop: The Sustainable Alliance Game

Educational objective: improve international alliance management skills. Research objectives: how do personality and team profiles impact alliance management skills? How to develop those skills?

  1. Understand the impact of alliances.  
    Examine the role alliances play in international business and society and the challenges they face. Learn to understand the process of partner search in which task and relationship related issues are intertwined and should be compatible between partners. Learn to understand and improve your role in the alliance team.

  2. Develop your network leadership and alliance management skills.  
    In the perspective of young international enterprises, build leadership, alliance and negotiation skills. Become aware of organizational and relationship dynamics in different networks. Build alliance teams with a collective mission. Compare and contrast yourself with a variety of entrepreneurs. How do you understand and manage the hidden dynamics affecting your alliance team’s behavior.

  3. Strengthen your tool kit.  
    Apply new alliance tools in order to start and maintain fruitful network cooperation for sustainable and social impact. Practice strategic, operational, cultural, personal and network compatibility between business partners. What does it take to use and build networks effectively?  You will acquire new alliance skills, to be put to use immediately upon your return. 

Educational form

Serious game, learning by doing, interactive lecture.|

Activities  

Before the game:

  • students fill in a questionnaire concerning personal values. 
  • role players acting as different business partners will be instructed. 

During the game:

  • game instruction
  • forming teams based on personal preferences
  • speed dates with potential partners
  • integrated partner analysis per team
  • team choose a partner
  • pitching of teams to partners
  • conclusions and lessons learned.

After the game:

  • students fill in a short questionnaire concerning team performance
  • debriefing of role players.

Duration:
½ – 1 day (variable)

Language:
English

Number of students:
Max. 28x per workshop (=7 teams of 4 people). Larger groups we will split into subgroups.

Research partners  

The workshop is part of the research project “Insights in Influence” in which we examine personality & performance of international creative teams. In the project several academic and business partners cooperate: Avans University of Applied science, Groningen University, Twente University, Tilburg University and International Universities and Business Schools. 

Researchers involved

Avans/Groningen: dr. F.G. Stel (prof. international sustainable business at Avans Expertise Center of Sustainable Business, Groningen Center for Entrepreneurship, Project leader; Twente: prof.dr. C. Wilderom (chair of Organizational Behavior & Leadership). International Universities and Business Schools: to be determined. More information: [email protected]