The Blogworld of Poppyfish People Development

Pandemic is a Poppyfish business simulation and management learning exercise designed to help organisations to understand the possible consequences of an outbreak of pandemic flu. The simulation involves participants managing a number of realistically structured and interactive departments, business units or teams through a pandemic cycle, juggling resources to maintain operations and deliver objectives. Run as a one day phased decision making exercise Pandemic uses data on infection rates from the UK Dept of Health and NHS but is tailored specifically to the organisational hierarchy of the client organisation. Learning objectives The learning objective of this simulation is that by the end of the session participants will have negotiated their organisation through a 15 week pandemic cycle and will understand more about the impact that an event such as a pandemic flu outbreak could have on their workplace. The simulation is primarily about strengthening organisational resilience ...

The room was bursting with undergraduates. In fact, had Roy Castle and Norris McWhirter walked in then the Record Breaking nature of what was about to happen would have been plain for all to see. Simulations involving over 60 people in one open session are rare beasts. Yet thanks to a chance conversation with Dr Tassos Patokos of the University of Hertfordshire Business School we, and his sixty students, were about to indulge ourselves exactly that. My mind went back to the chat Dr Patokos and I had over a glass of wine at a conference three months earlier. We had moved on from the euro-crisis and had started finding a more stable common ground, discussing how simulations can inject energy and creativity into learning. An expert in Game Theory, Dr Patokos was eager to see how such events played out, and how they might offer learning opportunities in which his undergraduate students could experience a different perspective on their work topics. We agreed to set somet...

A room full of scientists and technology transfer professionals may not be everyone's idea of a fun filled afternoon but anyone who attended the first Poppyfish Biodecision Simulation Workshop earlier this month would hopefully agree with me when I say that what was shared that afternoon was informative, fun and filled with learning.   This proof of concept workshop for Biodecision was the first time that this particular workshop had been held and took place at Rothamsted Research with the support of  InCrops .  Aims The aim of the Biodecision workshop is to create a system in miniature and to explore how people and organisations within the system interact and make decisions. The system in question is the commercialisation system for new technology. In this instance we chose fictional patented developments associated with the fictional biofuel, 'Cropanol', but this topic could vary depending on the audience. We split the fifteen delegates into s...