Design a business war game brief that defines the strategic question, scope, participants and success criteria.
Leadership & Management
Business War Gaming for Competitive Response Planning
Design and facilitate structured business war games that simulate rival moves, pressure-test strategic options and turn the findings into ready-to-trigger competitive response plans.
🗓️Duration5 training days
📚Content4 modules · 8 sessions
🎓On completionAccredited attendance certificate
About the programme
Course Overview
Competitors rarely announce their next move, yet most strategic plans are written as though the market will hold still while they are executed. Business war gaming closes that gap by putting real decision-makers into structured, adversarial simulations: one team plays the organisation, others play named rivals or new entrants, and a control team injects market events and adjudicates each round. This course teaches the discipline end to end, from framing the strategic question the game must answer, through building competitor profiles from public filings, pricing data and past behaviour, to designing moves, turns and scoring rules that keep the exercise rigorous rather than theatrical. Participants run a live war game on a real business issue, capture the competitor reactions it surfaces, and convert them into early-warning indicators and if-then response playbooks that line managers can act on without waiting for a further planning cycle. The emphasis throughout is on repeatable facilitation technique and honest adjudication, not a single dramatic exercise that is never repeated.
Expected Learning Outcomes
Build competitor profiles covering assumed goals, capabilities and likely response patterns from public evidence.
Facilitate multi-team simulation rounds, including move submission, adjudication and market event injection.
Apply game-theoretic concepts such as dominant strategies and payoff matrices to anticipate rival counter-moves.
Translate war game findings into early-warning indicators that trigger a pre-agreed response.
Draft if-then response playbooks that specify owners, actions and decision thresholds for each scenario.
Evaluate a war game through a structured after-action review to improve the next exercise's design.
Who Should Attend
Corporate strategy and business development managers preparing competitive response plans.
Marketing and commercial leaders responding to aggressive rivals or new market entrants.
Competitive intelligence analysts who brief senior leadership on rival behaviour.
Business unit and general managers accountable for defending market position.
Strategy consultants and internal planning teams who design scenario exercises.
Military or government planners moving into a corporate strategy function.
Course Modules
Select any module to see its sessions and points.
01Foundations of Structured Business War Gaming
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Origins and Design Principles of Competitive Simulation
- Trace how military and intelligence war gaming methods were adapted for corporate strategic planning.
- Distinguish a structured war game from a generic scenario workshop or brainstorming session.
- Define the strategic question a war game must answer before any team or move is designed.
- Set success criteria and scope boundaries that keep an exercise focused on decision-useful output.
Session 2Structuring Teams, Roles and the Control Cell
- Assign own-company, competitor and control cell teams with clear mandates and information limits.
- Recruit participants whose seniority and functional knowledge match each simulated role.
- Brief control cell members on their authority to inject market events and adjudicate disputes.
- Design the room, materials and schedule needed to run a multi-round exercise without delay.
02Building the Competitor Model and Intelligence Base
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Competitor Response Profiling
- Apply Porter's framework of future goals, assumptions, strategy and capabilities to profile a rival.
- Source competitor evidence from financial filings, pricing history, patents and hiring patterns.
- Identify blind spots and untested assumptions inside a competitor profile before the game begins.
- Validate profiles with functional experts in sales, pricing and product to reduce guesswork.
Session 2Gathering and Managing Market Intelligence
- Distinguish lawful competitive intelligence gathering from prohibited or unethical methods.
- Build a rolling intelligence file that tracks competitor announcements, hires and filings.
- Prioritise which intelligence gaps matter most to the strategic question under test.
- Brief competitor teams so their moves stay evidence-based rather than improvised.
03Running the War Game Exercise
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Facilitating Moves and Turns
- Sequence rounds so each team submits moves, receives injects and responds within fixed turns.
- Facilitate cross-team dynamics so dominant personalities do not distort simulated decisions.
- Manage time pressure and incomplete information to mirror real strategic decision conditions.
- Capture each team's reasoning, not only their final move, for later analysis.
Session 2Adjudication and Scoring
- Apply pre-agreed adjudication rules to resolve conflicting moves between competing teams.
- Score outcomes against market share, margin and customer response assumptions.
- Manage disagreements about adjudication without stalling the exercise's momentum.
- Record the decision path so it can be reconstructed during the after-action review.
04From War Game Insight to Response Planning
2 sessions · 8 points
Session 1Building Response Playbooks and Trigger Points
- Convert surfaced competitor reactions into early-warning indicators owned by named functions.
- Draft if-then playbooks that pair each indicator with a pre-approved response and owner.
- Set decision thresholds that avoid both premature reaction and dangerous delay.
- Pressure-test playbooks against a second, faster-moving competitor scenario.
Session 2Embedding War Gaming into the Planning Cycle
- Schedule recurring war games into the annual strategic and budget planning cycle.
- Assign ownership for updating competitor profiles as new evidence appears.
- Report war game findings to senior leadership in a format that supports real decisions.
- Build internal facilitation capability so future exercises do not depend on outside experts.
What the participant receives
4 course modules
A structured syllabus
8 training sessions
across 5 days
32 detailed points
Applied, detailed content
Accredited attendance certificate
On completing the programme
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