This workshop teaches cutting-edge strategic management lessons through an intuitive and enjoyable framework of the skills required to win at Mahjong.

Innovation and change are two of the key drivers of business success for organizations in today’s fast-changing, hyper-competitive, global economy. Successful innovation and change require the ability to identify, analyze and solve problems that you have not seen before: creative problem solving. Business problems requiring creative problem-solving can include situations like: reacting to competitive challenges, expanding to new markets, new product development, decisions to invest or not invest or how much to pay, management and organizational issues, etc. The ability to solve new problems is what separates superior from average performance - the average performer can solve a problem they have already seen before, but the superior performer can also solve a new problem.

Participants in this workshop series will develop a method and framework for solving difficult problems they have not seen before. The skills they will acquire will be applicable in a wide range of problem-solving situations, including: change management, product and service innovation, opening new markets, management decisions, investment decisions, risk analysis, leadership, communication, group problem solving, estimation and calculation, and allocation of scarce resources.

The workshop is structured in eight sections:

1. Problem identification and analysis
2. Creative problem-solving and critical reasoning
3. Innovation and failure
4. Risk and risk management
5. Strategic thinking 6. Competitive strategy
6. Decision-making with limited information
7. Financial decision-making

Approach and methodology

The workshop mixes theory and practice, as participants will learn by working through a series of problems, exercises and case studies, each of which is designed to illustrate issues, specific strategies and approaches and different classes of problems. Each problem-solving exercise and case study will be followed by a discussion of the underlying issues, how the solution fits into the problem-solving framework and how to put into practice the lessons learned. The material in the workshop is based on a wide range of disciplines, including game theory, prospect theory, statistics, probability, finance theory, complexity theory, physics, history, art, biology and cognitive psychology.

The framework of this workshop relates the key strategic management challenges facing organizations today to skills required to win at the game of mahjong. This linkage helps participants to intuitively grasp these key concepts and relate them to their own personal experiences, increasing the speed of learning and degree of retention.

Topics covered include:

• Seeing and thinking differently for creative problem-solving
• Asking the right questions
• Developing a tool kit for creative problem-solving
• Applying critical reasoning and strategic thinking for creative problem solving
• Sources of creative thinking
• Perception and reality
• Thinking outside the box
• Quantitative tools for creative problem solving
• Estimation and calculation problems
• Using game theory for problem solving
• Applying prospect theory in problem solving
• The importance of failure for innovation
• Understanding risk and return
• Measuring risk
• Managing risk
• Complexity and non-linear systems
• Are markets efficient?
• Are investors rational?
• Competitive strategy

Format

1-day workshop