From Research to Play: Developing Educational Simulations for Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Lunch Seminar in presence

Building BL26 – Room 0.19 (ground floor)
Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering
Via R. Lambruschini, 4/B

Ammon Salter
Warwick Business School, UK

Abstract:

This seminar is motivated by an observation: my students will happily spend hundreds of hours playing Football Manager — before, during, and after class — yet I struggle to convince them to read a single Harvard Business Review article. The challenge is not knowledge or content; it is attention. How we can try to build educational simulations with the depth, replayability, and genuine consequence of commercial games?

In the session, I describe the development of a suite of open-source, browser-based educational simulations designed to place students inside the kinds of strategic situations that research describes but conventional teaching methods struggle to convey — environments of genuine uncertainty, causal ambiguity, and consequential choice. The simulations — The Slingshot (an AI venture navigating UK innovation ecosystems and early-stage funding), The Disruptor (a Chief Innovation Officer managing a Belgian fitness equipment company across B2B, B2C, and platform markets), and Build, Bin, Boost (an R&D portfolio management game set within a fictional Indian deep-tech firm) — are each translated directly from my research interests into play.

The session discusses the process of simulation development, covering the iterative cycle of turning a research idea into a working game: translating theoretical frameworks into decision mechanics, designing an interface that rewards exploration without overwhelming players, integrating our knowledge and empirical insights into plausible scenarios and outcomes, and the essential work of playtesting. It also describes the open-source philosophy of developing tools for the community, and a technical approach around using Large Language Models as development partners and mobilising additional technologies. The discussion is targeted at ‘vibe coders’ those with little or no interest, knowledge, or experience in software development like the speaker, but who might be keen to try to build something that is useful for themselves and others.

Participants will gain insights what is practically achievable for an individual academic working limited institutional support, including a frank account of the time, cost, and iterative effort involved as well as access to the simulations themselves and the underlying development materials. The talk is intended to be of interest both to those who teach in the areas of entrepreneurship, innovation, and strategy, and to those curious about how AI-assisted development is changing the ways we might engage with our students and potential users of our research.

Ammon Salter is a Professor of Technology and Innovation Management at Warwick Business School. His research focuses on open innovation, R&D decision-making, social networks, AI startups, and university-industry collaboration. His work has been published across a variety of academic and management journals and has been recognized with several awards, including the Strategic Management Journal Best Paper Prize. He has led externally-funded research projects supported by external funding from the ESRC, EPSRC, and European Commission. Additionally, he is an honorary Research Associate at University of Cambridge's Centre for Business Research and serves on the Innovation and Research Caucus council of experts. He was editor at Research Policy from 2019-2025. Salter's research frequently involves applied collaborations with government bodies—such as Innovate UK and HM Treasury—and industry partners, including Arup, IBM, and CiteAb.