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Hi Mohammad,

Not the easiest icebreaker to design, especially if you are pressed for time and you want the students to be impressed by anything non-trivial. But I created a brainstorming game several years ago, and published it in an e-book late last year (for fun; definitely my most non-scholarly work!).

The game objective from that e-book is fairly simple: each person randomly combines from a list three published trends found in the news. The objective is to come up with a venture idea that leverages or makes use of those 3 trends.

The exercise for your class can be similar to a variant that I've tried. You need a list of trends, where each trend is described in a short paragraph (3-4 sentences long). Ideally you can generate a list of ~100 (future) trends; maybe you can assign students to submit trends (published in the news) as homework in the previous semester.

I split the class into groups of 4, and give each student a hard copy of the same list of trends, and I tell them that their objective as a group is to come up with their 3 top venture ideas, and each idea should be based on combining (randomly up to) 3 trends. Then I tell them that they will be rewarded with extra credit, whereby the extra credit structure is designed by a "manager" that I assign in each group.

Each manager is given 400 points to allocate to the entire team, including themselves. (Eventually those points get converted into course points.)

Generally, the moment that the group realizes that there is a manager determining the structure for each member's extra credit, the manager usually asks everybody in the group for their opinion on that structure.

The timing for the exercise thus goes like this:

10 minutes assigning groups, handing out and explaining the trends list, and identifying the manager.
Giving the manager 15 minutes to create the extra credit structure (if the manager doesn't ask for opinions from the group, the other group members are expected to use that 15 minutes to familiarize themselves with the trends list (optimally ~100 trends).
20 minutes for team members to brainstorm (individually?).
15 minutes for each group to discuss and agree on the best 3 ideas.
30 minutes for class discussion, asking each group to share their best 3 ideas with the rest of class, 45 seconds per pitch.
20 minutes as a class to discuss which brainstorming reward policies worked, and which ones probably didn't.

Obviously this can be a pretty long exercise at ~2 hours. But there are obviously ways to cut the time requirement down. And anyways, when there is a slight time crunch the students appreciate even more the value of good planning and effective incentives.

Very difficult to combine your four management processes meaningfully just into one quick activity. But my description above can cover elements of all 4, if you have the time.

Cheers, -chihmao

Regards, -chihmao ------------------------- Chihmao Hsieh Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship Graduate School of Information Yonsei University (UIC) website: www.chsieh.com tel: +82 032 749 3085  

 

 

 

-----------------------Original message-----------------------
From: "Mohammad Saud Khan "<mohammadsaud19@GMAIL.COM>
To: ENTREP@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU
Sent date: 2016-05-25 10:54:29 GMT +0900 (Asia/Seoul)
Title: [ENTREP] Icebreaker/Activity

 

 

Dear Colleagues,

Hope everyone is doing fine. I am searching for an interesting/fun icebreaker/activity for a Masters class (on Management) of about 40 students. Ideally, it would be great if the icebreaker/activity would somehow cover the four principles of management (planning, organizing, leading, controlling), but open to other one's as well ?

Thanks.

Best Regards,

Dr. M. Saud Khan  

************************************** This message is from ENTREP which is sponsored by the Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management. Please do not post messages with attached files. Commercial messages or spammed messages are not allowed on the list. The use of auto-responder "out-of-office" messages may also lead to your removal from the list. You can manage your subscription options, including joining or leaving the list here: http://aomlists.pace.edu/scripts/wa.exe?SUBED1=entrep&A=1 If you have questions or need help, please contact Jeff Pollack (jeff_pollack@ncsu.edu) or Kevin Cox (kcox24@my.fau.edu). Ventures HO!

************************************** This message is from ENTREP which is sponsored by the Entrepreneurship Division of the Academy of Management. Please do not post messages with attached files. Commercial messages or spammed messages are not allowed on the list. The use of auto-responder "out-of-office" messages may also lead to your removal from the list. You can manage your subscription options, including joining or leaving the list here: http://aomlists.pace.edu/scripts/wa.exe?SUBED1=entrep&A=1 If you have questions or need help, please contact Jeff Pollack (jeff_pollack@ncsu.edu) or Kevin Cox (kcox24@my.fau.edu). Ventures HO!