If you’ve been hearing the buzz on Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability, and are truly unaware of what this is all about, there’s now a fun way to learn all about it by just playing.

You can soon play The Deloitte Business Simulation Game, which is “designed to accelerate the implementation of corporate responsibility and sustainability initiatives via stakeholder engagement and development of leadership capabilities.”

The game will be showcased at the upcoming 2010 Amsterdam Global Conference on Sustainability and Transparency in Amsterdam, Netherlands later this week, and also featured as part of Deloitte 20/20.

It’s like Monopoly on steroids!!

And what will this game help with?

The goal is to enable companies to experiment with a realistic business model and its immediate external environment to evaluate the impact of their sustainability efforts. Players go through several business cycles, experiencing critical moments and interdependencies; and have to deal with the consequences of their decisions. Decisions occur simultaneously and interactively, mirroring the real world; and players need to reconcile dilemmas and respond to short-term priorities while ensuring positive impact on long-term sustainability.

Of course all along, you’ll hear from teammates, and from experienced facilitators, which along with frequent discussions and debates is mean to sharpen management skills.

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Global Sustainability & Climate Change Leader Nick Main, says, “….business sustainably will no longer be a luxury for the motivated few—it will be the normal course of business for any company expecting to compete effectively. The Deloitte Business Simulation Game offers companies an effective change management tool…”

Business simulation games are so nineties, that you rarely hear about them nowadays.

This one looks quite cool.

There is some sense, a unique need for this kind of simulation, both in a corporate setting and even perhaps for governmental agencies. And there’s a 2 minute video, which is worth watching at http://www.csrwire.com/press/press_release/29676-Deloitte-s-New-Solution-to-Accelerate-the-Implementation-of-Corporate-Responsibility-and-Sustainability

The recent British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico comes to mind, where both the company, the oil service providers, the Gulf states and Federal government were totally unprepared to deal with a rig explosion and its tragical aftermath. Was this situation improbable, perhaps it was, but not impossible. A simulation of this extreme scenario in a safe game setting, had it been envisioned, would have prepared companies and their employees to prevent and deal with such disasters.

Sustainability and reporting on it and climate change are only getting to be a bigger part of the corporate agenda, and if you can learn about it in a fun way, then makes a dull subject just that much more interesting.

We’ll be real curious to see if companies do take this up and Deloitte reports on some success stories and some that were not so successful, since there’s learnings to be had from both situations.

Deloitte, Sustainability, corporate responsibility, game, climate change,

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