Incub@game: Play the management game!
In a few weeks, all MUSE students and staff will have the opportunity to test their knowledge of entrepreneurship and learn some management basics through Incubagame, a “serious game” conceived and developed by Professors Montpellier Management and their partners.
Natural and futuristic settings, high-resolution graphics, and a next-generation android named Xena serving as your coach… Welcome to the virtual world of Incub@game! A “serious game” created by Montpellier Management to introduce you to the basics of management and entrepreneurship in a fun and engaging way.
Educational and sustainable innovation
Serious games, which gained popularity about a decade ago, are educational tools designed to help users acquire knowledge through gameplay. This initiative is Montpellier Management’sresponse to the TAKE OFF#1 call for proposals launched in 2018 by MUSE to support educational innovation across the institution’s various departments and partner schools. “This is a real opportunity for Montpellier Management, and the field of entrepreneurship seemed to us like the natural theme for approaching management in a cross-disciplinary way with a non-expert audience,” explains Sophie Spring, a faculty member and researcher who leads the Incubagame project.
A game accessible to all students and staff within the MUSE network, whether or not they have a business project, and with no prior management experience required. The only requirement to log in to the platform is an institutional email address. To reach the widest possible audience, entrepreneurship is approached through the lens of sustainable development. “It’s an essential requirement,” explains Sophie Spring. “We’re all aware of it today, and students even more so. It’s also a way of reminding people that modern management promotes integration from the design stage rather than correcting ecological and social damage after the fact.”
A futuristic world
As soon as players log in to Incub@game, they are welcomed by Xena into a futuristic world consisting of three areas corresponding to the major themes of business creation: aligning the entrepreneur’s profile with the company’s mission, market positioning, and the legal and financial strategies to be implemented. “The selection of these themes is the result of synthesizing the various areas of expertise and knowledge of the Montpellier Management faculty and our partners [see box],” explains Sophie Spring.
Within each section, various modules explore subtopics such as strategic positioning, marketing analysis, business planning, and legal structure. Challenges such as building a rocket or racing through space serve as opportunities to test one’s knowledge through quiz games and to explore the fundamental concepts of management. At the end of each segment, a debriefing is conducted with Xena, and upon completing the game, a dashboard allows the player to view their strengths and areas for improvement.
A real educational benefit for beginners, even though, as Sophie Spring points out, “this isn’t a course on starting a business—you don’t come away from the game with specific skills. Rather, it’s an introductory module to management that might inspire some people to take it further.”
The Montpellier Management Strategy
This is a logical next step for Montpellier Management, whose pioneering role in educational innovation has already proven its worth. “We launched e-learning courses ten years ago, and we also support blended learning that combines distance and in-person instruction. We see, in a crisis context like the one we are currently facing, that these teaching methods can prove essential,” notes Marie-Christine Lichtlé, Director of Montpellier Management.
As for entrepreneurship, it has long been one of the department’s areas of expertise. “Along with auditing, accounting, and finance; management and strategy; and marketing, it is one of the cornerstones of our curriculum, as well as of the research conducted in our laboratories, which is rooted in a long history of work on entrepreneurship,” explains the director. This initiative already foreshadows another major development at Montpellier Management: the upcoming launch of the I-Lab, the very first student incubator led by the University of Montpellier.
- If you'd like to access the game, please contact the team.
Partners
The design of this game is the result of a genuine collaboration between Professors various disciplines taught at Montpellier Management and a range of private and institutional partners “who contributed their vision to this project,” notes Sophie Spring, who coordinated this collective effort. Participants in Incubagame included: Banque Populaire du Sud, the Montpellier Business and Innovation Center (BIC),URSSAF Languedoc-Roussillon, the Regional Council of the Order of Chartered Accountants, Labex Entreprendre, and the Center for Research in Environmental and Social Accounting (CSEAR).