Wargaming

KappaWest has been undertaking Business Wargaming and related strategic and operational planning projects for more than 15 years.

KappaWest has designed, developed and implemented more than 200 Wargames in over 15 countries in North America, Europe, South America, and Asia.

KappaWest’s Business Wargaming and other planning related work has been undertaken for a broad range of clients, including both global giants and smaller, entrepreneurial organizations, representing a mix of industries, including for example:

• Information Technology
• Telecommunications
• Defense and Aerospace
• Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology
• Consumer Products
• Professional Services
• Healthcare and Medical Devices

A Business Wargame is a structured, disciplined and facilitated process designed to make the development and execution of a plan more effective by helping an organization to understand a situation much better than it could through other approaches.

This process involves assigning several teams, usually three to eight, to represent different “players” in the situation. Depending on the purposes and scope of the wargame, these teams might play the roles of the company conducting the Wargame, each of several different competitors, a market or a key segment in it, a specific customer, a regulatory body, or some other organization that could affect the situation in real life.

At the conclusion of the wargame, facilitators lead a group discussion to capture all the lessons learned throughout it. Depending again on the purposes and scope of a particular wargame, it is it is likely to generate a mix of both hard and soft deliverables:

Hard deliverables might be:

• A rigorous analysis of the situation that defines specific opportunities, obstacles, risks and needs that were uncovered
• Specific recommendations concerning actions that should be included in a plan being developed, or to improve the level or probability of success of an existing plan
• The definition of critical areas of missing market, competitive or other forms of intelligence.

Soft deliverables might include:

• Increased knowledge that will lead to better day-to-day decision-making
• Increased teamwork and less “silo mentality”
• More effective communications among participants
• Ability to use a selected set of highly effective concepts, models and tools in other planning situations
• Increased awareness of the reality of market, competitive and other changes in the company’s business environment.

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