Once students have gone through the ideation process and have decided upon an entrepreneurial concept, it becomes important to gain market feedback. It is not enough to believe that one’s idea is good. It must be tested, so as to reduce the risk associated with entrepreneurship. The students’ goal for this game is to gain as many points of feedback for their concepts as possible.

Learning Outcome:

This game enables students to gain multiple points of market feedback to better (and make more viable) their original entrepreneurial concepts. 

How to Play:

Students are divided into pairs and assigned an A or B.

All A’s sit in a row, side by side, and are faced by all of the B’s. Ideally, there is an equal number of students in class. But if there is an odd number, one group will consistently have three people (Ex: two A’s and one B). 

Each pair has a total of six minutes to both share their concepts and give feedback.

A will have three minutes, as will B.

During A’s three minutes, they will receive feedback on the concept from B and vice versa. Having only three minutes each necessitates that both A and B are succinct in the description of their concepts to allow for as much feedback time as possible.

Once the six minute period concludes, the instructor resets the stopwatch and A will move one seat over (let’s say to the left) and B will stay seated.

One person on the end of the A row will need to walk to the beginning of A’s row and sit. In doing this, each person is now sitting in front of a new person.

This process repeats for another six minutes, with A’s continuing to move down a seat each six minutes.

In the course of an hour and a half class, each student should receive between ten and fifteen points of feedback on their concept.

Tips:

Students should look for patterns from their classmates’ comments. Did they hear the same thing again and again? Were they urged to change their audience or develop additional revenue drivers? Did their concept not seem to hold water? Whatever information they received, they should accept it and consider modifying their concept, where appropriate.

If you would like to use these games in your own classroom, please do! If you do, let me know how how it goes and if you have suggestions for modifying a game. 

I can be reached at jdhart@smu.edu. 

This game appears under a different title in the book “Educating Arts Entrepreneurs: Does, Can or Should One Size Fit All?”. If you choose to use this game/exercise by Jim Hart, please cite in the following way:

Beckman, Gary D. and Hart, James D. Chapter: “Educating Arts Entrepreneurs: Does, Can or Should One Size Fit All?” In Embracing Entrepreneurship Across Disciplines, authored by Satish Nambisan. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd., 2015.