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Playing for success
TEXT: SILKE HENKELE I PHOTOS: MARKUS RÜSE
A team-event from Cologne inspires enterprises worldwide When leading banks, chemical corporations or the automotive branch discover the charm of games, this is often down to Cologne-based company Spielgestalter. The team-building and event specialist is the developer of ‘Beat the Box’, one of the most successful team-building concepts of the last few years.
tions which were located in six different countries. The success of this session was phenomenal,” recounts Wittek.
above all, cooperation, will reward them with joint success. “The game is a striking blueprint of a company’s daily business,” explains René Wittek, M.Sc. Psychology, one of the founders and director of Spielgestalter. “Although the participants follow a common goal, they very quickly become competitive. They don’t share their findings and keep back information. ‘Beat the Box’ enables the participants to perceive these patterns and to change them.”
The event agency Spielgestalter was founded by Markus Rose, MBA and René Wittek, M.Sc. Psychology in 2013. The company’s focus on individual and singular team-events that consciously use elements of games as a method for teamevents is popular, and Spielgestalter’s team today counts ten members. Since 2015, Spielgestalter is the exclusive partner of the international team-building network Catalyst Global, which is represented in more than 40 countries and which enables international enterprises to gain extensive synergy effects in team-building.
So far, the team-event has been licensed in more than 40 countries. As of June 2018, it counted more than 93,000 enthusiastic participants, and only recently has been awarded the highly prestigious MP Power Award for Best Team Building Event 2017. Gamification meets storytelling The secret of ‘Beat the Box’s success is the following: The playful concept combines artful thrills, gripping entertainment and skillfully managed group dynamics. The participants are split up in small groups of up to six members. Each team has 90 minutes to open their own aluminium case and the four smaller cases within. The participants learn very quickly that creativity, thinking outside the box and, 96 | Issue 64 | July 2018
The game’s concept also allows for international teams to connect and thus, despite the spatial separation of the teams, creates an inspiring atmosphere for the joint solution of the game’s riddles. “We have played ‘Beat the Box’ in nine loca-
About Spielgestalter
You can find further information about team-events and the developers of ‘Beat the Box‘ at www.spielgestalter.de.