On February 3rd, the kick-off of the fully revised course Sustainable Business Management took place at the Utrecht University of Applied Sciences. Perspectivity was invited to host the climate game and seventy students in Technical Business Administration gathered to take on the role of world leaders to compete for scarce resources. These students were joined by 10 green ambassador students from ROC Scalda who came over from Vlissingen and by a diverse group of professionals in the field of education that explored how sustainability and dialogue can be fostered in their respective fields by means of serious social gaming.
Xannah, Henk, Eveline, Fanny, Martijn, Erik, Freek and Herman guided the students through the dice-throwing, disasters and the accompanying frustration. In the debrief the students were taken 20,000 feet up when, Hans van der Loo, one of the guests at the education table and partner at the Global Resilience Initiative, delivered an inspiring speech about the responsibility of the student’s generation to acknowledge the exponentiality of their era and make it through the ‘anthropocene’. He challenged them to develop mindsight, on top of their eyesight, to start seeing system dynamics.
The students afterwards indicated that the game triggered insights around responsibility, collaboration, the importance of clear agreements etc. We could have heard a needle hit the floor, as the students reflected on the challenge that had just been put in front of them.