Game The System: The Entrepreneur Empathy Experience

We're trying to address mindset and behaviour. By immersing WDI stakeholders in a collaborative role play experience in which they adopt the character of someone seeking resources -- likely someone without wealth privilege -- we engage them on a empathetic level. To play well, they need to shift their mindset to that of the character, and understand that character's challenges within a system informed by the Wealth Defense Industry. The only way to win is empathize -- to go deep to understand what their character is up against -- which is to say, the only way to win is for the player to challenge their own mindset.

The Entrepreneurship Empathy Experience is a live-interaction role playing game that exposes players to the unevenly distributed challenges, advantages and opportunities that different kinds of entrepreneurs face in funding and building their businesses. Informed by real data and insights from diverse founder journeys, the game guides players across an uneven entrepreneurial playing field and has them work in groups to navigate challenges in the guise of different entrepreneur personas. Players leave with deeper understanding of the systems that constrain entrepreneurship or innovation for many, as well as a deeper investment in ‘gaming’ the systems that currently reinforce inequitable privilege, in service of a more equitable playing field. We are looking to expand the scope of the game in two ways: adapt for a broader global demographic (including the UK), and create at least one new variation that can be adapted for engaging Wealth Defense Industry stakeholders across more targeted issue areas. We have tested the experience in the UK once.

By engaging WDI stakeholders in this stimulating, fun, and insight-driving experience, we'll have a significant "nudge" impact in shifting mindset and ultimately behaviour in circles of wealth privilege and in the cultures of their organizations. Immersive empathy, especially the kind that taps their competitive impulses and sparks their imaginations, has a ripple effect that can spread and influence not just their own decision-making, but the cultures that they influence as well.