The Disruptor puts you in the cockpit of Chief Innovation Officer at Vélox Dynamics — a €420M Belgian fitness-equipment manufacturer — and challenges you to navigate the tension between heritage engineering and digital disruption over 3 simulated years. The game flows continuously, events arrive dynamically, and a connected set of managerial practices and systems competes for your attention and resources.
Visit the repository's GitHub Pages site and play instantly in your browser. No installation required.
The game is a single HTML file — grab it once and it plays without internet, on any modern browser. Handy for classrooms with patchy wifi.
The Vélox Dynamics case study (20–30 min read) prepares you for the simulation. Students who read the case treat it as a strategic simulation, not a resource puzzle.
Two tutorial modes are built in. A Quick Guide covers five essential topics (your dashboard, the R&D pipeline, strategy, and tips for success) and gets you playing within minutes. A Full Guide walks through every managerial practice and system in depth, with explanations of every panel, every decision type, and every metric. Experienced gamers skip straight to playing; cautious players read everything first. Both approaches work.
The game flows continuously — time advances week by week, with events arriving, projects progressing, and competitors moving in real time. You can pause, speed up, or slow down the simulation at any point.
Unlike turn-based games, The Disruptor runs as a continuous simulation. Weeks tick by, events fire, staff work on projects, and the market evolves while you make decisions across the firm's managerial systems. You can intervene at any time — hire staff, launch projects, form alliances, respond to events — without waiting for a "next turn" button. Quarterly milestones mark board check-ins and annual reviews, but the simulation never stops to wait for you.
Pause the simulation to think, or accelerate through quiet periods. Three speed settings let you control the pace.
Weekly events arrive dynamically — market shifts, competitor moves, staff issues, technology breakthroughs. You respond as they happen.
Annual board reviews evaluate your cumulative performance. These are the key milestones — everything else flows continuously.
A set of interconnected managerial practices and systems competes for your budget and staff. See the About page for the full list. The core tension: every euro and every person you commit to one system is unavailable for others.
Fund and manage 25–30 projects across three horizons. When projects complete, prepare innovations through readiness activities, then launch to market. Timing and sequencing matter.
Hire across 13 disciplines, set salaries, shape culture through 10–15 organisational policies. Staff capacity is the hardest constraint — every system draws from the same pool.
Alliances (230+ partners), university partnerships, corporate venturing (69 startups), technology scouting, and crowdsourcing. Each extends your reach — but carries risk and cost.
Grow Vélox+, manage patents and trade secrets, engage with 38 industry standards. Platform amplifies launches. IP protects revenue. Standards gate market access.
Every year (at Q4), the board conducts a formal appraisal. You're evaluated on three dimensions: financial metrics, innovation metrics, and organisational metrics — simultaneously. Your annual appraisal tier determines budget adjustments and shapes your career trajectory.
Each tier comes with budget changes, approval changes, and consequences for your tenure at Vélox Dynamics.
Your annual targets escalate as Vélox grows. The board expects measurable innovation outcomes alongside commercial results.
These insights will help you navigate your first playthrough more effectively.
The Vélox Dynamics case study prepares you for the simulation. Without it, you'll treat the game as a resource puzzle rather than a strategic simulation. 20–30 minutes of reading makes a massive difference.
The game's core dynamic is the tension between heritage engineering and digital disruption. Don't ignore the Foundation's mission — it's real, it's constraint, and it creates the challenge. How you navigate this tension defines your strategy.
Invest across all three horizons. Horizon 1 (incremental) delivers near-term revenue. Horizon 2 (adjacent) builds capabilities. Horizon 3 (transformational) creates future opportunities. The board expects balance.
Your 67-person R&D organisation is your greatest asset and your greatest vulnerability. High morale enables ambitious projects. Low morale causes key staff to leave. Invest in culture, engagement, and career development.
Too many launches in quick succession cause revenue collapse and brand damage. Plan launches across quarters. Quality over quantity. The Innovation Launchpad guides you through the 5-step process.
Ten AI-controlled competitors are pursuing their own strategies. Pay attention to what they're doing. Competitive intelligence is not optional — it's essential for strategic positioning.
When your three-year mandate ends, the game generates a comprehensive PDF report — not a simple score screen, but a structured evaluation of your entire CIO tenure.
Performance metrics (board approval, revenue targets, innovation mix), project throughput, portfolio balance (H1/H2/H3), capability development, cultural investment, IP portfolio, external partnerships, commercial impact, and platform ecosystem health. Every dimension is mapped to the ISO 56001 Innovation Management Standard (Clauses 4–10). You receive an Innovation Maturity score (0–100), a Legacy Score (A–D), and a detailed narrative of your tenure — providing concrete evidence for reflective essays and class discussion.
You've learned the systems, understood the flow, and grasped the challenge. Now step into the cockpit of Chief Innovation Officer at Vélox Dynamics.