Playing Lean 2 board game

Playing Lean is the board game where players face the hard choices of innovation without getting out of the building. 

It’s our "flight simulator" for Lean Startup and innovation, the safe place where thousands of entrepreneurs have learned to fly without risking their life savings or the future of their workplace. The worst case scenario is a humiliating defeat at the hands of your colleagues (quite scary, actually).

With our Playing Lean 2 board game you can teach your clients and students lessons on Lean Startup, create interest in Business Model Canvas, go deep on the Value Proposition Canvas or run lean with the Lean Canvas.

To create Playing Lean 2, we have partnered up with Alexander Osterwalder, inventor of the Business Model Canvas and one of the great minds of Lean Startup. 

The concept and ideas of Value Proposition Design underlies the brand new scenario we have built for Playing Lean 2 - the Hospitality Industry. 

You can also expand the game with the Ride Sharing Scenario and Social Media Scenario, which covers additional Lean Startup concepts and adds replayability to your game!

In the game teams take charge of one of four startups that compete for the lion's share of an emerging market. To succeed, these startups must hit the market with experiments to figure out what customers really need. 

Each experiment is represented by a unique card that gives valuable insight into Lean Startup, Lean Canvas, Business Model Canvas or Value Proposition Design.

If your experiment is successful, you also get insight into what your prospective customers really need. Once you know your customers, it's time to build the features that will meet their needs. 

A lean mindset is necessary. Each new feature adds to the complexity of the product and makes the next one even more expensive to build. You must take care to only build the features that customers will pay for.

As you build the product, you must also start marketing and selling to get the customers in. You start by reaching out to individual early adopters.

Build the company

Your company is made up of five separate Company Blocks. To improve, you have a chance to upgrade your Company Blocks every turn. You must outbid your competitors, though. Perhaps they want improvement more than you?

By upgrading parts of your company, you can improve your skills at building the product, experimenting and selling.

The end game is to capture the majority market before your competitors know what happened. Can you reach your goal without falling into a chasm?

Check out our FAQ page to get answers to the most asked questions about the game, and check out the gameplay video! 

This game was funded on Kickstarter in April 2018 in just 14 hours! Go check out our Playing Lean campaign page to see how it all went down!