On 3 April, 2017, Perspectivity hosted the Nexus! Challenge at Wharton’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy. The Kleiman Center at Wharton focuses on Energy Policy Innovation and promotes its application—creating opportunities for students, researchers, and professionals to debate viewpoints, explore options, and develop agendas for decision and action.
The session brought together a good mix of professors and researchers as well as students from the Design School, Business School as well as the School of Art & Sciences, all at the University of Pennsylvania. The workshop was facilitated by Jaspreet Singh and Sarabhjit Kaur from Perspectivity.
During the debrief session, Jaspreet and the participants reflected on their experience. The idea was to brainstorm on what Nexus! simulates through Perspectivity’s lens of complexity and dialogue.
Most participants liked the concept of cooperating to succeed and considered that their key takeaway for the real world. A professor drew a parallel with his work where individual departments sometimes have their short-sighted individual goals and how he tries to make them look at the overall interest of UPenn.
Most participants also enjoyed the negotiations during the game. Some participants were uncomfortable about not having enough information and time to reflect and discuss the rules and strategy for the game. They did appreciate that in real-life time-constraints and uncertainty often demand fast decision-making. Another participant highlighted that there should be an environmental constraint (eg. Pollution aspect) incorporated in the game, a feature which has already been incorporated in Next Nexus!.
Overall, the session was well-received and most participants found the game experience interesting and challenging and the debrief session thought-provoking in different ways.
An interesting comment from a participant was that to him the biggest insight was that while everyone shared the feeling that the outcome could be better for everyone; but still, it did not happen. Such is the power of complexity and uncertainty!