Co-founders Marcus and Chris had been facilitating learning sessions and conferences for twice that time, and both had developed a love of clashing learning, work and play. In 2015 they designed their first game – an early version of Grimsby's Code – with a spreadsheet and some fish cards. Other games were "in the works", but never really progressed while the duo devoted most of their efforts to building a training business.
In 2020 the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and with it the unexpected opportunity to focus on this passion project. The name for the venture incorporates the play of dolphins and the industriousness of bees, with a nod to their social groupings: "Pod&Hive" was born!
Now we are a collection of facilitators, coders, visual designers, researchers and gamers, all driven to bring energy and engagement to organisational learning and development.
Our games are – at heart – group behavioural simulations. This means they shine a light on how we behave in social units: groups, teams, divisions, organisations and networks. They provide an engaging sandbox to reflect on how we might currently behave, and/or to try out new behaviours together. Our games are all underpinned by:
With Doctoral qualifications in complexity in organisational teams, our game mechanics are all complexity driven, in the academic sense of the word. This means the games are easily played but not easily mastered, and also that the richness is found in the player-player interactions, not in gimmicks or tricks known to the facilitator. As a result our games are eminently replayable.
Our team members with postgraduate qualifications in these areas bring a richness to both the gameplay and to the debriefs we build.
Our postgraduate studies in business and our deep experience in commercial and government organisational work means we are able to connect the simulations and their debriefs to the nuances of everyday organisational life for participants.
Every simulation is built on well known and well tested frameworks from our organisational scholarship, connected through our deep experience to your everyday world. This means participants get real, well researched takeaways wrapped in simple practical language.
As gamers, if we don't enjoy playing the game ourselves we won't make it for anyone else!
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