Building Moonshots

WAY 34Play Games: Pretesting your plans in wargames creates a deep understanding of your winning options.

About the Way

Playing games is often cited as one of the earliest human activities, and the fascination continues in modern times. Books about games fill store shelves, covering topics such as the innate role of play in childhood development, the effect of video games on today's workforce, and the benefits of gamification in recruiting and other activities. In the 20th century, beyond entertainment, groups used games to explore pressing future challenges. Notably, the “World Game”¹ by polymath Buckminster Fuller was an educational simulation designed to help citizens explore a better and more peaceful future, while RAND's Cold War games helped military and political actors to explore the truly unimaginable. Now in the 21st century, various consumer games promise strategic insight, including Asmadi's “Innovation” card game, X's “Moonshots! A Game of Radical Thinking” web‐based game, and Blizzard Entertainment's “StarCraft” global real‐time phenomenon.

Wargames are a special category of strategy games. As the name indicates, wargames have been used by militaries for centuries—invented in Prussia in the late 1700s—to simulate complex war situations and teach battle strategies.² Wargames still play a vital role in various military services worldwide. In the United States, for example, the Naval War College has used wargames as a decision‐making tool and teaching technique since ...