What Are Prosperity Games^TM?

Prosperity Games^TM , run in partnership by Sandia National Laboratories and Domenici Littlejohn Inc., are an adaptation of strategic war games applied to peacetime issues. The Game at EIA’s 2004 Executive Leadership Forum will be tailored to meet the unique challenges the electronics industry faces as companies deploy resources around the globe. At issue is the question of whether the offshore outsourcing of R&D, engineering, design and integration is a threat to innovation and economic prosperity in the U.S.

The Game will be highly interactive, competitive at some points and collaborative at others. Participants will plan and construct strategies and will begin to implement them through negotiation, joint ventures, alliances and market creation.

Attendees of the Forum will be organized into teams before they arrive at The Breakers in January, and each team will represent a different stakeholder in the system. Each participant in EIA’s Executive Leadership Forum will receive in advance a player’s handbook. This handbook will outline the flow of the Game and provide background information on the issue of technology industry offshore outsourcing.

The tightly packed agenda we have planned – two full mornings of activity – will keep the action moving. We believe the resulting experience will be relevant and immediately useful for all of our participants. We also expect it to provide long-range ideas and options for EIA as we seek to develop legislative and regulatory opportunities to make the U.S. a friendlier (and more competitive) business environment.

EIA’s Game will involve several stages, including a context-setting briefing, team strategy development, interaction and negotiation, and strategy refinement. After teams identify their initial goals and challenges, they will hear from other stakeholders and be presented with changes in the business landscape. From here, participants will have to react and re-assess their plans based on what they have learned. Through this process, we hope to identify the challenges, unknowns and opportunities our industry faces in high-tech R&D, engineering, design and integration. In a final session, the participants will discuss the implications of what they have accomplished and what they have learned, and they will consider how to transfer these lessons back into the workplace.

January’s Prosperity Game will be a crucial step in the longer-term initiative EIA kicked off this autumn, and it and will be vital in the development of the regulatory and legislative playbook we are developing for opinion leaders and policy makers who seek to preserve and foster technological innovation.

For further information on EIA’s offshore outsourcing initiative or January’s Prosperity Game, please contact Storme Street , Senior Director of Government & Corporate Affairs.