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During our Global Online Event, Inchainge Connect Educator Conference – which was held on March 30th 2022 – we were joined by several educators from across the globe, along with speakers and mentors The event was a huge milestone for us as we revealed our latest business simulation game, The Triple Connection. 

Following the event, we had some interesting discussions with the attendees. In particular, we spoke to David Brown-Brulant who is an educator at SKEMA Business School as well as an experienced supply chain manager. 

David has been an active user over the past few years of our business simulation games, like the Fresh Connection, the Blue Connection and the Cool Connection. He spoke to us about his experience at the Inchainge Connect Educator Conference 2022 as well as the educational challenge of helping companies transition to sustainability. 

David’s experience at the conference 

For David, the business games of Inchainge allow students to learn about Supply Chain in a more practical and holistic manner and this gives them an edge while applying for jobs. They are better aware of how things connect in the supply chain and they can assess or make suggestions about how a decision can have an impact.  

In an era when teachers have to compete with “auto-internet education” it is important that educational institutions add obvious value to the student experience. For David, Inchainge’s business simulation games are part of that obvious value. 

For David, the key interest to join the Inchainge Connect Educator Conference was the Triple Connection. He mentions, “I am a bit of an Inchainge fan.” He also enjoyed the expert talks and said that the international input into the conference “added an extra layer”. 

When talking about Inchainge Connect, David told us about his favorite sessions from the conference: 

• Egge Haak’s session on ‘Data Analytics Hands-On and Lessons from Experiential Teaching of Data Analytics’: “The Fresh Connection” environment ensures the business relevance of what could otherwise become a crowd-pleasing exercise.  
• Ed Weenk’s Masterclass about ‘how to get the richest and most engaging in-class value chain experience for your students’ was both engaging and informative for him. He said, “I was enthralled by Ed Weenk’s talks where he describes how he teaches with both The Fresh Connection and The Blue Connection.” He said that Ed addressed a really important subject about student evaluation, as it corelates with the impact of the Inchainge business simulation games. He said, “I agree with Ed that we need to be more curious about measuring the learning that takes place in class.”  
• Chuck Nemer and Tracy L. Cheetham’s session ‘Key to success on game-based learning’ was an “eye-opener”.

When asked about whether the conference was what he had expected, David said, “With Inchainge, you need to be ready to be surprised. For a very positive surprise.” 

The Leadership Dimension

David goes on to say that in standard education the leadership dimension is lacking and it is important to have a practical sense of what it is. Inchainge’s games gives participants the chance to test various leadership practices to help their teams meet the goal and learn about what works for them as a leader. 

He said, “Inchainge is at the cutting-edge of the revolution that’s happening in education and teaching at the moment.” 

What can be the expected future in sustainability? 

David mentioned that there is a tsunami of capital expenditure headed towards sustainability1. Whether our society gets a good return on that investment depends in particular on our ability to think things through and to adapt our business models across the world. 

Since there are so many practical moving pieces in the transition to sustainability, experiential learning can be a step forward as it drives critical reasoning. David referred to our business simulation game, The Blue Connection, which engages participants into ensuring a business transition to a more circular economy. The Blue Connection provides participants with the opportunity to apply the recipes and frameworks, which they learn in theory, to practice.  

He said, “Traditionally we come from a culture that underlines individual performance. But the question in sustainability is how do we succeed as a team?”

Transitioning to sustainability isn’t supposed to be an easy process but is a necessary step towards a circular economy. That is indeed what we tried to achieve through the Inchainge Connect Educator Conference. It is educators like David who made this conference a huge success and with the reveal of our newest business simulation game, The Triple Connection, we believe that we are one more step closer to our sustainability goals.  

Did you miss out on the conference? Don’t worry, you can visit our webinar page right here to see the recordings of our speakers.