Business consulting and assistance firm Celemi today announced a new serious-themed business game called
The Medici Game, which is designed to tap employee creativity and help companies create the conditions that stimulate innovation.
The Medici Game takes participants on a three-hour journey into "the intersection," a creative place where "thinking from different cultures and fields collide to create an explosion of remarkable ideas," noted the game's co-creator, Frans Johansson.
The Medici Game is built around the concepts explored in Mr. Johansson's book, 'The Medici Effect: Breakthrough Insights at the Intersection of Ideas, Concepts & Cultures'. During the game, participants are challenged to reverse their own assumptions, make unusual connections and reevaluate their daily habits. As a result, Celemi hopes that experience will help break down the associative barriers and linear thinking that block creativity and innovation.
'The Medici Effect' and
The Medici Game take their name from the Medici family, who used to rule the city of Florence, Italy over 500 years ago and ushered in the Renaissance, a period known for its innovation and change.
The Medici Game is played in teams of 3 or 4 and can be run for thousands of people simultaneously. Celemi will provide facilitators or train company managers to run the sessions.
"Most companies seem to have little trouble coming up with directional ideas--those that improve existing products or services, or create new categories that are the next logical step," commented Celemi president Michael DiGiovanni. "It is more difficult to generate intersectional innovation--the type that creates an entirely new field and can drive directional innovation for years to come.
The Medici Game helps create the internal conditions for that kind of leap."
