Last week I was invited to the School of Arts in Hilversum (HKU). That morning, Game Design students were presenting two game concepts for Regional Stations and ‘Fish Miles’. InnovationNetwerk had asked HKU to develop these as a ‘tool’ to help galvanize parties in our network into action.

Two groups of students filled a cramped sweaty room, with two sharp-eared teachers sitting behind their Apple laptops ready to tap in their critical comments. It struck me that some students had no problems telling their story in English, while others could barely string two words together. The ‘Fish Miles’ game is about the endless carting of food across the globe, which is obviously not good for the environment. Sending shrimps on a round trip to Morocco for a peeling session does not feel right to the average consumer. And flying line-caught cod in from Iceland strikes me as the height of environmental inconsistency. In the game that my group of students have thought up, the fish is sold out in the shop, so the player has to go and get his fish himself in a harbour, either at home or abroad - the motto being: ‘get it yourself’.

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On his quest, he can score sustainability points. The moral of the game is that local fish is better on all counts.

The second game was developed by another group and centres on Regional Stations. The game highlights the advantages of regional partnerships for selling local agricultural produce in a motorway store, also known as the Regional Station. In this board game councillors and policymakers must work together to score points. The game is still being developed, because on the open day of the HKU it took an hour to produce a winner, which is a bit long. My colleague Hiske de Ridder commissioned this game but unfortunately she was unable to attend.

The students are working on their game with great enthusiasm, and are also doing their best to understand the backgrounds to innovation. I was astonished to see how much they had learned about the substantive side of things in such a short space of time. Within the group the tasks are strictly divided between designers, programmers and artists and one student has been appointed as design manager to keep everybody on their toes. InnovationNetwork acts as a real customer, setting specifications for the end product and a delivery time limit. I found it really inspiring to see these higher vocational students grappling with our innovation concepts in such a creative manner – and doing this with the entirely different medium of a computer or board game. It’s sure to give our creativity fresh new impulses, and literally makes innovation a whole new game!