Tech Tempest is a team-based competitive simulation where participants design, build, and defend a digital banking bid, making real strategic decisions on technology, risk, and competitive positioning. The scenario is banking. The learning is universal: strategy, risk, AI literacy, and teamwork, capabilities every organisation needs.
Three converging forces
🏛️
Ancient Wisdom
Eight civilisations, eight strategic capabilities. History becomes a lens for modern decisions.
🤖
AI Tools
Research, analyse, evaluate, then apply human judgement. AI literacy through structured practice.
💼
Business Challenges
Real trade-offs in strategy, infrastructure, pricing, and AI governance. Every choice has a consequence.
Five integrated learning dimensions
🏛️Ancient Wisdom
Historical capabilities as a lens for modern strategy
🧠AI Literacy
Use AI tools to research, analyse, and defend decisions
🎯Strategic Thinking
Choose your strategy, design your offering, price your bid
⚖️Risk & Governance
Face a risk committee that prices every bold choice
🤝Teamwork
Four roles, eight civilisations, one contract to win
The experiential arc: Kolb (1984)
🏛️ Council
Form your team. Explore the biggest questions.
Concrete experience
📐 Blueprint
Choose your strategy. Design what sets you apart.
Reflective observation
⚒️ Forge
Location, releases, pricing. Build the bid.
Abstract conceptualisation
🛡️ League
Face the Risk Committee. Defend every choice.
Active experimentation
Framework mapping, how each element connects to established theory
🏛️ Ancient Wisdom
History as a decision-making lens
Historical analogies shape how leaders judge and act on current problems. Tech Tempest makes this process explicit, each civilisation embodies a strategic capability that participants apply to modern challenges.
Neustadt & May (1986) · Thinking in Time · Harvard Kennedy School
Historical role-immersion
Participants assigned to historical factions with committed perspectives report higher engagement, self-efficacy, and perceived learning than those in conventional courses.
Carnes (2014) · Reacting to the Past · 480+ institutions
Narrative identity formation
Civilisation identities create cognitive scaffolds, participants remember "we're the Byzantine Architects and our strength is quality" long after they've forgotten the point values. The narrative carries the learning.
Bruner (1991)
🏛️Athenian
People · Debate
⚔️Roman
Growth · Scale
🕌Byzantine
Quality · Endurance
🎨Medici
Finance · Patronage
🐪Silk Road
Social · Trust
🔭Alexandrian
Tech · Discovery
📜Sumerian
Legal · Governance
🐉Ming
Create · Innovation
Each civilisation's historical excellence maps to a modern strategic capability, an X-Factor that shapes every decision from design through to risk.
🧠 AI Literacy
Florence & the say-do gap
What customers say ≠ what they do. AI surfaces stated preference, judgement finds revealed behaviour.
Kahneman (2011)
Evidence rating
Critical evaluation of AI-generated output. Is it behavioural proof or stated intent?
Florence Nightingale · 1858
The Very Curious Human
Four-step AI interaction framework: ask, give context, probe every answer, own the judgement.
Original to Tech Tempest · UNESCO (2024)
🎯 Strategic Thinking
The Ziggurat Model
Three-tier strategic design: essentials → differentiators → signature innovation. A synthesis of Kano, Porter, and McKinsey Three Horizons.
Kano (1984) · Porter (1980)
Strategic Fit quadrant
Two-dimensional portfolio analysis: Fit × Evidence guides feature selection into Priority, Strategic Bet, Consider, or Avoid.
Porter (1980)
Strategic archetypes
Strategy as a deliberate choice, not an accidental outcome. Participants choose their shape before building.
Porter (1980)
⚖️ Risk & Governance
Five-factor risk pricing
Risk as a quantifiable function of decisions. The committee prices every bold choice.
ISO 31000 (2018)
Automation risk
AI governance as a design decision, the hidden cost appears at governance review, not build time.
NIST AI RMF (2023)
Phased delivery & capacity
Breaking complex programmes into releases. Managing the trade-off between speed and execution risk.
The Scrum Guide (2020)
🤝 Teamwork & Inclusion
Team formation
TBL methodology · individual accountability within team performance
Michaelsen (2004) · Belbin (1981)
Eight functional roles
C-suite perspectives · cross-functional diversity
Belbin (1981)
Selective composition
What you leave out shapes what you see
Belbin (1981)
Competitive rounds
Problem-based learning · narrative pedagogy
Michaelsen (2004) · Bruner (1991)
Every perspective at the table
💼Merchant
CRO · Growth
💡Inventor
CPO · Create
🔮Oracle
CHRO · People
⚖️Advocate
GC · Legal
🛡️Sentry
CQO · Quality
📊Scribe
CFO · Finance
🧠Philosopher
CSO · ESG
🏗️Engineer
CTO · Tech
Every participant: STEM, humanities, business, creative, finds a role that matches how they think.
Distinctive design features
Synthesis
The Ziggurat Strategy Model
An original teaching metaphor that synthesises Kano, Porter, and McKinsey Three Horizons into a single visual framework, accessible to secondary participants and senior executives alike.
Novel application
Automation Risk as Governance
AI feature selection framed as a risk management decision, the cost appears at governance review, not at build time. Grounded in NIST AI RMF and the EU AI Act.
AI literacy methodology
The Very Curious Human
A four-step AI interaction framework, ask, give context, probe every answer, own the judgement, built on UNESCO's AI Competency Framework for structured, critical AI use.
Inclusive by design
Eight Functional Roles
Every participant finds a professional lens that matches how they think, from engineer to philosopher. Built on Belbin's team roles, Hambrick's Upper Echelons, and T-shaped skills research.
International standards referenced
ISO 31000:2018COSO ERM 2017NIST AI RMF 1.0EU AI Act 2024IEEE 7000UNESCO AI Framework 2023
Appendix: Selected References
The core works the design stands on. A fuller reading list is available on request.
Belbin, R.M. (1981). Management Teams: Why They Succeed or Fail. Heinemann.
→ Used in: Eight council roles, team role composition
Bruner, J.S. (1991). The narrative construction of reality. Critical Inquiry, 18(1), 1–21.
→ Used in: Civilisation identities, narrative identity formation, competitive narrative
Carnes, M.C. (2014). Minds on Fire: How Role-Immersion Games Transform College. Harvard University Press.
→ Used in: Historical role-immersion pedagogy, civilisation faction alignment
ISO (2018). ISO 31000:2018: Risk Management Guidelines.
→ Used in: Risk Committee, five-factor pricing, risk spectrum
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
→ Used in: Florence & Data, Evidence Rating, The Very Curious Human
Kano, N., Seraku, N., Takahashi, F. & Tsuji, S. (1984). Attractive quality and must-be quality. Journal of the Japanese Society for Quality Control, 14(2), 39–48.
→ Used in: Three-Layer Ziggurat Model, feature categorisation