A little bit of stress goes a long way

You’ll experience what it’s like to:

-- run a startup

-- help an internal venture succeed

-- shape the strategy of an organization using machine learning

-- lead a team through a crisis

Each of these challenges requires specific expertise, expertise that can only be gained through practice. We aren’t born with the ability to manage a team, negotiate with a customer, pitch an investor, or use an algorithm to predict revenue. Practice, in a variety of modalities, is the key to developing these crucial skills.

But there is practice, and then there is practice.

Low-stakes practice – writing a paper, presenting in class, taking part in a discussion – can only get you so far. Successfully navigating high-stakes situations requires a different kind of practice environment, one that mimics the stresses of the real world.

Our games are carefully designed to put players under simulated pressure so that they perform better when it counts: in real life. We give you support early in the game and a chance to practice when the stakes are lower, and then as you master new skills, we dial up the pressure (while maintaining the fun), giving you a chance to make increasingly consequential decisions. Practicing under stress simulates situations you will encounter when using these skills later and teaches you to stay focused and perform in real world pressure cooker situations.*

By reducing the gap between training (the game) and real life (when you’ll have to perform) we give you a critical edge.

For instance:

-- In the Entrepreneurship Strategy Course you’ll need to bring a key initial customer on board and do so through a high-stakes negotiation via an interactive video. If you fail, your startup may not make it. This is training for the real world, where landing a beachhead customer can be critical to the success of a startup.

-- In the Organization Leadership and Innovation Course, you’ll have to pitch key stakeholders to invest in your new venture. If you fail, your venture may not have enough funding to succeed, mimicking the real-world pressure faced by any new venture.

--In the Machine Learning for Business Decisions Course you’ll need to leverage machine learning at scale to make consequential recommendations and decisions mimicking the real-world pressure data scientists, and digital marketing professionals face when using algorithms to solve a business problem.

--In BlueSky Ventures, you’ll navigate through the challenges of evaluating startup ideas and learn to think like a successful entrepreneur.

*For more on how a simulated environment that mimics real world stress can help performance see: Beilock, S. (2010). Choke: What the secrets of the brain reveal about getting it right when you have to. Simon and Schuster.