If you had the opportunity to probe the future, make strategic choices, and view their consequences before making expensive and irretrievable decisions, wouldn't you take advantage of it? Of course you would. And in a world of asymmetrical conflict, security threats, intense global competition, and economic uncertainty, there is an even higher premium on road-testing plans and strategies--whether they're spearheaded by government organizations, transnational corporations, or emerging megacommunities. Wargaming for Leaders provides a methodology to get at the issues that one leader, no matter how visionary, cannot grasp on his or her own. How? By bringing together the real experts on the topic at hand to wage “cognitive warfare.” Through tapping the collective wisdom surrounding an issue, experts can experience the future in a risk-free environment and find answers to questions that had not been on their radar--often with unexpected and startling results. With examples from the fields of military, corporate, and public policy, three wargaming developers from Booz Allen Hamilton deliver compelling insights on this problem-solving method, including fascinating details on how A large equipment manufacturer determined whether making a merger was strategically right for its business growth, as well as which technology investments it needed to drop A four-star U.S. general tested his war plan for Iraq and uncovered specific fixes that might have prevented a prolonged conflict An increasingly clogged air-traffic system faced a security-versus-convenience issue determined whether military airspace could be used during peak demand periods Wargaming allows organizations of every type and every size to organize information, plot out scenarios, and tap into the collective expertise of participants. The results allow everyone to identify and tackle obstacles, solve problems, and find new ways to innovate and further performance goals. Get ready for the battle of your organizational life--and prepare to reap the spoils of victory.

First Published in 1985. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In a global, complex, and competitive world, developing a plan without testing it against market reaction is like walking blind into a minefield. War gaming is a metal detector for a company. Yet war games run by the large consulting firms are kept secret and cost millions. For the first time, this book makes them accessible to every product and brand manager, every project leader, every marketing professional, and every planner, no matter how small or large the company. Business War Games will show you in steps and practical detail: How to decide if war gaming is right for you Which decisions call for war gaming How to prepare, organize, and run a realistic and inexpensive war game How to predict competitor moves with accuracy and little information Why you do not need computers, consultants, software, or a PhD in math to do it well This book is your bible of how to stay one step ahead of your competitors. Do not leave home without it.

In a global, complex, and competitive world, developing a plan without testing it against market reaction is like walking blind into a minefield. War gaming is a metal detector for a company. Yet war games run by the large consulting firms are kept secret and cost millions. For the first time, this book makes them accessible to every product and brand manager, every project leader, every marketing professional, and every planner, no matter how small or large the company. Business War Games will show you in steps and practical detail: How to decide if war gaming is right for you Which decisions call for war gaming How to prepare, organize, and run a realistic and inexpensive war game How to predict competitor moves with accuracy and little information Why you do not need computers, consultants, software, or a PhD in math to do it well This book is your bible of how to stay one step ahead of your competitors. Do not leave home without it.

Whether your primary interest is to improve your card game or put together a political coalition, here you will be enjoyably instructed in an approach to strategy that has caught the imagination of a generation of readers.

Industry consolidation, mergers, changes to business models, the emergence of new threats all require managers to understand highly complex situations, assess risk and opportunity and make informed decisions. How can senior managers do this effectively when so often they are wrestling with brand new scenarios? One of the emerging solutions is business wargaming. Daniel F. Oriesek and Jan Oliver Schwarz provide the first comprehensive look at wargaming as a business tool in a book that explores the anatomy and success factors of a typical wargame. The authors explain how and when wargaming can be used to test strategies, plan and prepare for crises, manage change or increase your organization's ability to anticipate and adapt for the future. Creating imaginative and credible scenarios, and testing them against smart opponents who are eager to find holes and counter your strategy, allows you to learn about a plan or a new venture in the security of the conference room rather than learning the hard way when you go live. Business wargames are sophisticated but they are also very demanding in terms of time and resources. Business Wargaming: Securing Corporate Value will enable you to assess the potential value of the technique for your own organization, to understand what you will be committing to and develop an informed business case and brief for working with the organization that will facilitate the game.

The convergence of military strategy and mathematics in war games, from medieval to modern times. For centuries, both mathematical and military thinkers have used game-like scenarios to test their visions of mastering a complex world through symbolic operations. By the end of World War I, mathematical and military discourse in Germany simultaneously discovered the game as a productive concept. Mathematics and military strategy converged in World War II when mathematicians designed fields of operation. In this book, Philipp von Hilgers examines the theory and practice of war games through history, from the medieval game boards, captured on parchment, to the paper map exercises of the Third Reich. Von Hilgers considers how and why war games came to exist: why mathematical and military thinkers created simulations of one of the most unpredictable human activities on earth. Von Hilgers begins with the medieval rythmomachia, or Battle of Numbers, then reconstructs the ideas about war and games in the baroque period. He investigates the role of George Leopold von Reiswitz's tactical war game in nineteenth-century Prussia and describes the artifact itself: a game board–topped table with drawers for game implements. He explains Clausewitz's emphasis on the “fog of war” and the accompanying element of incalculability, examines the contributions of such thinkers as Clausewitz, Leibniz, Wittgenstein, and von Neumann, and investigates the war games of the German military between the two World Wars. Baudrillard declared this to be the age of simulacra; war games stand contrariwise as simulations that have not been subsumed in absolute virtuality.