Threats and Trade-offs

A game of digital business survival

Do you want to run a digital start-up? Perhaps you already do! Threats and Trade-offs is a table-top board game which incorporates cybersecurity, innovation management, and business development.

Premise: Your company promises to shake things up in healthcare tech with an ingenious product-service offering: a reader device that reads health information beeped from a smart pill. Customers can monitor health stats on their fingertips! All the data is stored in the cloud so that doctors and employees can access user information and provide consultation and support services. But digitalisation increases the exposure to cyber threats! Can you make smart choices for your company?

What a game makes possible

Research

Game play helps to externalise inherent knowledge and biases of players, and thus understand decision-making and behaviours.

We are using the game to understand technology adoption choices under different levels of competition, externalities, and regulations.

Teaching

Games provide immersive and experiential settings which help many students remember and recollect new knowledge.

We are using the game to teach cybersecurity to business and management students and entrepreneurship to computer science students!

Social activity

Games bring people together in social spaces and help in building teams. They provide a fictional setting and a safe space to explore different personas.

This is an unintended outcome of the game, but we have learnt to embrace our role as entertainer-educators!

Player testimonials

  • You feel like a start-up... you are always borrowing money to stay afloat, but then you can turn it into profits quite quickly as you make progress across different business stages, get more customers, defend against potential threats and don’t lose money from like compliance or data loss.

    MSc Cybersecurity student, Cardiff University

  • At first we didn’t really invest in cyber defences - we thought it was okay, it will not affect us much... but later when we noticed customer satisfaction going down and losing customers, we realised we were not really well-protected against cyber attacks!

    MSc Innovation Management student, University of Manchester

  • I learnt that investment in cyber security is of utmost importance for any digital start-up.

    MBA student, University of Bath

  • Even though it is a game, I learnt a lot about the business development stages and the kinds of attack, and what is needed to mitigate those attacks.

    MSc Cybersecurity student, Cardiff University

  • The game has so many interesting aspects that show how different factors have an impact on a company's cash flow.

    MBA student, University of Bath

  • I definitely got right into this! It was really interesting and a good team-building thing.

    MSc Cybersecurity student, Cardiff University

  • Very informative! Confusing at times, but fun to be a part of!

    MSc Business Analytics student, University of Bath

Ready to play?

  • If you are interested in organising a learning or social activity for your students, colleagues, or employees, get in touch with us! We can design a bespoke session which uses the game to meet your learning needs and time availability.

    Send an email with the subject line “Board game workshop at (name of your organisation)” to threatstradeoffs@bath.ac.uk

  • You can print the game material and start playing yourself! We charge no fees for non-commercial use of the game.

    You will need 1 regular 6-sided dice and 5 counters (pawns/meeple) for each team.

    Cards

    Game board (print on A2 paper)

    Loan pad

    Game master guide

    Cyber attack reference table (available upon request - send an email with subject line “Threats and Trade-offs DIY” to threatstradeoffs@bath.ac.uk

  • We have recently received funding to make an online version of this game. Watch this space!

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