An Unconventional Convention

Collaboration between: Coventry University, Glued and Risk Evolves

Context: We realised that many of our clients took a rather maverick approach to get around bureaucratic and political barriers to achieving their goals. But how could we get in front of more people like this – especially as it was almost in their nature to avoid the ‘ordinariness’ of networking. We decided to create an event of sufficient interest to draw these prospects to us. So we approached one our own clients who we considered to be maverick, and also had access to cutting edge technology, to see if we could collaborate with them to put on such an event.

Coventry University’s Delia Derbyshire Building, the home of the metaverse, provided an excellent basis for collaboration. The notion of doing something in Virtual Reality or Augmented Reality seemed entirely on message. Dr. Rachel Farrer challenged Glued to devise a proposal for the event.

Following attendance at an event at which the then new Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, spoke we realised innovation was going to become a vital theme in the improved performance of the UK. We discovered that Harvard Business School had narrowed down the skills required to achieve innovation to: Collaboration, Curiosity, Risk Taking and Creativity.

As luck would have it another of our ‘maverick’ clients is an expert in Risk Management. So we secured the support of Helen Barge, Managing Director of Risk Evolves and proposed an event that might compare the way different personality types might respond to a risk situation.

The idea went down well with Coventry University and Glued coined the term and title ‘The Unconventional Convention’. Dr. Bianca Wright, Curriculum Lead for Immersive at Coventry University, enthusiastically took the brief from Glued and Risk Evolves to challenge some of her students.

The Requirement: The triumvirate of Coventry University, Risk Evolves and Glued agreed the parameters of an event using Virtual Reality for business leaders to partake in risky scenarios, to which their responses might be observed by other team members and themselves in a reflective way. This providing the opportunity for people to understand how what may appear to be illogical responses to crisis actually have purpose. This in turn allowing us to moderate our own response to others and learn how to harness their ‘revealed’ logic. Providing the foundations to guide others to work more effectively in teams.

Coventry University Students set about creating a number of virtual reality scenarios for business leaders to be tested with. Alongside this they planned a workbook or manual that other members of a group could use to assist those in ‘virtual reality’ to navigate the challenges.

The Outcome: Following rehearsals, on the day of the pilot for The Unconventional Convention some twenty business leaders gathered at the Delia Derbyshire Building. They were invited to speculate how they would respond to a team building challenge and their response used to identify which one of four personality/behavioural types most resembled them. Namely: Dominant, Influential, Conscientious, Steady. These ‘types’ were mixed into four groups. Each group was given a Virtual Reality headset and a manual with Augmented Reality functionality and challenged with cycling through scenarios in the headsets featuring a spaceship in crisis. The challenge being to assist those in the headsets to solve a number of puzzles to avoid the spaceship being sucked into a black hole.

The Results: The pilot provided a proof of concept and identified elements that could be improved. The feedback was resoundingly positive and the plan is to repeat the ‘Risk taking’ module both on site at The Delia Derbyshire Building and off site at client premises. Glued are in the process of writing the second Innovation workshop in the series on creativity. In the meantime Coventry University are addressing the issues discovered with: resistance to using the headset, motion sickness and a lack of familiarity with the virtual reality controls. Whilst Risk Evolves are courting clients who would benefit from using the programme on their own premises.

“Would like to use the session as a good fun team building exercise in general, showing how important communication and team involvement is etc.”

Chris Lord, General Manager, e-ppl

“The overall experience, in virtual reality, learning to problem solve with complete strangers. It became clear that there was huge value to be had as a team building exercise in its own right.”

Julie Cooper, IT Security and Compliance Manager at We Are Digital