The Puzzle Project: Entrepreneurship Simulation

Tina Seelig, Stanford University

This five minute video captures the essence of a two hour workshop in which student teams must reconstruct a jigsaw puzzle. Several puzzles are mixed together and the pieces distributed randomly to teams. The teams are urged to challenge assumptions, leverage resources, seize opportunities, pay attention to the market, and to create value. Every ten minutes the “market” changes. The video shows the set-up of the game, the action, and several minutes of debriefing with the teams. In this two hour exercise, students must develop a strategy, they need to collaborate and compete, they must negotiate and barter, they need to be creative, and they must divide the tasks at hand in order to create the most value.