BOX IS A FAST-PACED COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT THAT PRESERVES THE IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNICATION, TEAMWORK, AND LISTENING SKILLS.

The BOX workshop uses a hands-on, experiential simulation as a tool to improve your people’s business decision making, whether they are staff or students! Participants start and run a box-making business for several ‘imaginary’ months and are placed under pressure to perform and beat the competition by making more profit. Through the experience, they play the role of managers (financial, production, HR), and workers and during the simulation interact with suppliers and customers. In many cases, they need to accomplish their objective or task by influencing others. We create a fun, yet pressure-filled environment, in which great learning occurs - business and behavioural.

THE SIMULATION PROCESS

Everyone is challenged to participate in the fun and competitive production and management of a product. Starting with a kickoff meeting, roles and processes are established. Participants are presented with the management of a number of concepts and activities.

1) Your cross-functional teams receive a business assignment

2) The teams go into management meetings to develop basic business plans

3) They turn their business plans into action, against the clock

4) Each team markets their value to the customer

5) They measure and analyze their businesse results, including an income statement

6) Most critically, they reflect on what happened and learn from their mistakes and successes

No One Gets to Hide in a Team Business Workshop

Everyone is challenged to participate in the fun and competitive production and management of a product. Starting with a kickoff meeting, roles and processes are established. Participants are presented with the management of a number of concepts and activities.

SIMULATION KEY LEARNINGS

• The importance of understanding the customer and their needs (internal and external)
• The importance of using this understanding to influence your vendors or internal suppliers
• How to adapt in a continuously changing environment
• How to troubleshoot and think creatively
• How to influence others
• How the engagement of the entire team is needed to achieve stronger business results
• How to think of the whole business and not just your silo

APPLICATION BACK TO THE BUSINESS

All the learning can then be applied to real challenges in the business, using the value-chain as the foundation for making business changes with bottom-line impact.

In the corporate or non-profit environment:

Why run the BOX Workshop?

Employees take the lessons from the entrepreneurship workshop and, guided by the facilitator, apply them to their own value-adding roles in the organization. They learn how to view the business holistically and not just from their department or individual vantage point. They learn the language of business and gain skills that result in decisions with bottom-line impact. Here is how to benefit from BOX+:

• Your organization’s vision is reiterated
• Participants analyze their individual function as if it were a business
• They identify their key internal suppliers and customers, their inputs and processes
• They determine their key value drivers, analyze how to maximize these and how to overcome constraints, develop a plan of action, including milestones and measurements
• Before leaving the workshop, participants make business improvement recommendations using the business skills, language and logic gained throughout the workshop
• Participants implement and track these lessons in the workplace

In the education environment:

Why run a BOX workshop?

In the BOX entrepreneurship workshop, students are intensively engaged in starting and running a “start-up” business.

The BOX entrepreneurship program teaches great lessons first hand about business, all the while combining competition, negotiation, teamwork and many other essential soft skills that can’t be learned via a textbook or lecture. Here are some concepts taught in BOX:

Key Learnings:

• Supply and demand forecasting
• Competition in the “marketplace”
• The impact of technology
• The role of advertising
• The impact of quality (or lack thereof)
• Looking at the bottom line (profitability)
• The challenge of the future, planning for the unforeseen

PROGRAM SIZE

Teams typically have 4-5 members each, and a workshop is ideally between 16-30 people. Participants of all disciplines can participate.