🎯 What Is This?

Build, Bin, Boost is a free, open-source business simulation for teaching innovation management and R&D portfolio decision-making. Players take on the role of Head of R&D at an Indian technology company, making realistic decisions about project selection, resource allocation, and portfolio management over a two-year period.

The simulation is designed for use in business schools, corporate training programmes, and self-directed learning. It takes approximately 20–40 minutes to complete and can be played individually or in teams.

⚠️ A Teaching Simulation

Like a teaching case, Build, Bin, Boost was prepared for class discussion and learning — not to illustrate effective or ineffective handling of a real situation. ShieldTech India is a fictional company, and all characters, names, projects, products, events, data and other materials are invented for the simulation. Any resemblance to real companies, organisations, products or people — living or dead — is unintentional and purely coincidental. Nothing here is real financial, strategic or investment advice.

And as in a case, outcomes are deliberately uncertain: a good decision can still fail, and a weak one can get lucky. The aim is to judge the quality of your decisions and the process you design — not only the results you happen to get.

💡 Why We Built This

Most business simulations are expensive, proprietary, and locked behind commercial licenses. We believe high-quality educational tools should be accessible to everyone—students at under-resourced institutions, independent learners, and educators who want to experiment with their teaching.

This simulation was developed as part of ongoing research into innovation management education at Warwick Business School, University of Warwick. It's released under a Creative Commons license that allows free use, adaptation, and sharing for non-commercial purposes.

🔒 Privacy & Analytics

We don't want to know who you are. We have no interest in your identity, background, or personal information. There is no advertising, no marketing follow-up, and no data sharing with third parties.

What we do want to understand: How people use the simulation so we can make it better. Basic analytics help us answer questions like: Which features are confusing? Where do players get stuck? How long do different phases take? Is the difficulty balanced correctly? Are our educational objectives being met?

Why this matters: As academic developers of free educational software, usage data is how we demonstrate impact, justify continued development time, and identify what needs fixing or improving. Without some understanding of adoption and engagement, we're developing in the dark.

Your choice: Analytics are entirely optional. The game works identically whether you accept or decline. You can change your preference at any time.

👨‍💻 Created By

Ammon Salter's research focuses on the management of innovation and technology, with particular interests in corporate R&D, open innovation, university-industry partnerships, and science commercialisation.

🤝 Contributors

🎓 Playtesting & Feedback

With thanks to the students of the Corporate Entrepreneurship module on the Masters in Management programme at Warwick Business School, who playtested an earlier version of this simulation and offered many valuable suggestions for improvement.

🤖 Development Assistance

📄 License

📚 Citation

🎯 Your Mission

You've been appointed Head of R&D at ShieldTech India, a home security company. Your predecessor was fired after years of poor results. The board wants you to transform how the company selects and manages innovation projects—and deliver on four strategic priorities.

🎯 Strategic Priorities

The board has set four priorities for the next 3-5 years. Your portfolio should align with these goals:

📋 Game Flow

💡 Things to Consider

• Read the details: Click on projects and staff to see full profiles. The information matters.
• Think about risk balance: Some projects are safer bets with predictable returns; others are ambitious with higher uncertainty. What's the right mix for your portfolio?
• Committee composition matters: Different people spot different things. Consider what perspectives you need.
• Portfolio tending: Projects need ongoing attention. When should you persist with a struggling project, and when should you cut your losses? Killing early recovers more of the budget to redeploy; killing a future winner is costly. Does project type matter?
• Watch for signals: Project updates and the red/amber/green status tell you how things are really going—a project burning budget faster than it delivers progress turns amber, then red. What are the signals telling you?
• Strategic coverage: The board set four strategic priorities. How much does alignment matter? Is concentration a risk?
• Make active decisions: R&D dilemmas and quarterly reviews give you choices. Passive management is a choice too—but is it the right one?
• Timing matters: The right decision at the wrong time can still be costly. Consider whether different project types need different amounts of patience.

Devi — AI Advisor (Optional)

Named after Shakuntala Devi (1929–2013)

Shakuntala Devi (1929–2013) was an Indian mathematician, writer, and campaigner for social and educational reform. Self-taught, she became renowned for her extraordinary mathematical abilities and was a vocal advocate for education access, women's rights, and LGBTQ+ equality in India.

Before starting, you can choose how much AI assistance you want. Devi analyses R&D projects based on thousands of historical patterns.

Learning objective: Experience the limitations of AI-assisted decision-making—when to use AI as an input vs. when human judgment matters more.

📊 How You're Evaluated

The board evaluates you across multiple dimensions:

• Selection accuracy: Did you fund winners and reject losers?
• Portfolio returns: What ROI did your investments generate?
• Risk balance: How did you balance safe bets against ambitious projects?
• Strategic alignment: Did you cover the board's priorities? Was your portfolio too concentrated?
• Portfolio management: How well did you tend the portfolio over time? Were your kill decisions well-timed?
• Active leadership: Did you make decisions, or let the portfolio run itself?

The board delivers their verdict—ranging from promotion to CTO down to being asked to leave. Different paths can lead to success: there's more than one way to impress the board.

🎓 Learning Objectives

Through play, you'll practise the core skills of R&D portfolio management:

• Design selection processes — choose decision-making structures and evaluation approaches, and see how process design shapes outcomes.
• Evaluate innovation proposals — weigh technical feasibility, market potential, strategic alignment and team capability.
• Balance portfolio risk — mix incremental improvements with transformational bets to meet the board's strategic goals.
• Allocate scarce resources — categorise projects and spread a limited budget across competing opportunities.
• Manage actively over time — judge when to persist with a struggling project and when to cut your losses.
• Navigate organisational dynamics — handle team conflicts, budget pressure, competitor moves and political considerations.
• Recognise decision-making biases — see how committee composition, evaluation methods and cognitive biases shape selection.
• Weigh up AI in decision-making — explore how AI advice can help, and mislead, in R&D project choices.

Underlying these are concepts such as stage-gate review, kill discipline, the sunk-cost fallacy and escalation of commitment, Type I/II selection errors, exploration vs. exploitation, and counterfactual analysis — the challenge of judging innovation under genuine uncertainty.