Facilitating serious play

This article provides a descriptive account of how researchers at the Imagination Lab Foundation (I-Lab) designed, facilitated, and followed up on organizational interventions involving a process called "serious play". It additionally describes the outcomes observed in association with these interventions, and closes with a series of reflections on the significance of those outcomes for organizational decision making, especially with regard to the relationship between strategy process and content; the overcoming of psychological defenses; the role of power; and the cultivation of adaptive potential. This article begins by outlining several basic assumptions. It then describes in detail the design and facilitation of interventions involving serious play in organizations.