Via: Game Developers Conference 2010 - Serious Games Summit
SGS Session: Blossom - Immersive Entrepreneurship Training
Speakers: Jelena Godjevac (CEO, MEA-I / Hewlett Packard)
Session Description
This session is a case study of an entrepreneurship training game.
Micro-Enterprise Acceleration Institute (MEA-I), a not for profit organization, sponsored mainly by Hewlett-Packard, develops and implements worldwide innovative immersive training programs to improve IT and business skills to create job opportunities.
Their online strategy is to create an engaging immersive learning program to foster entrepreneurship. The focus is to use IT technology in a business context, which combines rich and interactive media content (videos, simulations, serious games, exercises, assessments) with a face-to-face approach in order to engage young audiences around the world.
Blossom is a management and role playing game, where the player manages and develops a business through the smart use of technologies. This development is part of a unique Social Innovation program focusing on entrepreneurship education of underserved populations worldwide.
Game Context and Background
On 19, October 2009 HP EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) unveiled some of the success stories so far that have underpinned the GET-IT graduate entrepreneurship program in 2009.
The GET-IT program launched in 2007 provides IT training to unemployed youth and graduates between the ages of 16 and 25, and helps potential entrepreneurs acquire IT skills with the aim of enabling them to become better placed to create and run their own businesses.
With this program HP also aims to address one of the most critical needs to qualify younger people on IT and entrepreneurship skills to enable them to contribute to the economic development of their countries.
GET-IT City and Serious Games
Those who do not live close to a GET-IT training centre in EMEA are able to access some of the courses online. HP and its partner MEA-I have created a web portal where any potential young entrepreneur can log on for training and advice.
The online "Serious Game" (please find also my related post KTM Advance: Serious Games For Corporate Training) called Blossom enriches the GET-IT City portal and looks at management role playing.
The player’s mission is to save, manage and develop a flower business, to increase turnover and to improve customer satisfaction. To achieve the mission, the player runs the plantation and the office, interacts with the clients in the market place and gets advice in the resource centre. The more the business grows, the more new situations occur and the more skills the player develops.
GET-IT is part of HP’s social investment strategy aimed at innovating teaching and learning to help young entrepreneurs in achieving success in their future careers. The program provides IT equipment, a cash donation, access to the GET-IT curriculum (T-Tools) as well as a training of trainers for the respective local partner organizations.
With the help of its partners MEA-I, UNIDO, World ORT, HP has rolled out the GET-IT program in over 100 centers in 30 countries in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, reaching more than 100,000 young people through combined online and offline training courses. HP and its partners plan to grow GET-IT even further to reach over 500,000 young people by the end of 2010.