Simulation gaming as a social development instrument: Dealing with complex problems

Improving public service delivery is a very complex domain and the complexity is difficult to grasp by stakeholders having various degree of knowledge and involvement. An emergent and promising method for dealing with complex problems is simulation gaming, which can be used to capitalize the intrinsic experiences and knowledge of people and mobilize their creativity to come up with new solutions. A simulation game refers to a situation in which human participants play a role and follow rules of play to simulate complex situations. We developed a simulation game for the field of public-­‐private service delivery. The purpose of the game is to facilitate public organizations to get to the core of problems in service delivery and to stimulate the collaborative development of innovative solutions for public service delivery. Playing the game at a municipality shows that the game is suitable for creating awareness and for the identification and development of alternative solutions. The game can be used to substitute the “authoritative-­‐know-­‐all” approach by a “wisdom of the crowds” approach, incorporating the social collaboration that is a key concept in Web 2.0 thinking.