About Us

The idea for Playing Lean was born back in 2014, when we held a a Kanban workshop for a customer using the getKanban board game. Because of the game, the workshop was a great success. The participants were engaged and the lessons stuck. Workshops and classroom training didn’t have the same effect. After a fruitless search for a similar game to teach innovation, we decided to make Playing Lean ourselves.

A failed Kickstarter and lessons learned

Together with the team, we used the Lean startup approach to develop Playing Lean. After some good initial progress we decided to run a crowdfunding campaign. It failed! We got valuable lessons in sales and marketing, however. Holger Nils Pohl joined the team, contributing to the visual clarity of the game. Ash Maurya, the author of Scaling Lean, also came onboard as an advisor.

A successful Kickstarter

Several iterations and an USA tour later, a new crowdfunding experiment was ready and it was a smashing success: Playing Lean was funded in just 10 hours! Then Bruno, a passionate Lean practitioner, joined and together we trained over a hundred facilitators creating a strong community spanning from Oslo to Sydney. We saw Playing Lean being used in corporate training programs, universities, accelerators, and independent consultants. By late 2017 Playing Lean was sold out.

Playing Lean 2

We decided to gather all our learning from the Playing Lean 1 and come up with an even better and more valuable version of the game. Partnering up with Alexander Osterwalder, the creator of Business Model Generation and Value Proposition Design, we designed Playing Lean 2.

Another Kickstarter hit

A new Kickstarter campaign was launched and it was an even bigger success than the previous one. Over 230 games were sold, with new orders coming in daily. As the community grew bigger and stronger, we needed someone to nurture the growing numbers so Dora joined as our community manager.

The team behind Playing Lean has changed over the years as has the game, with everyone bringing something new to the table. Also, the ever-growing support of the Playing Lean community has helped us grow and make Playing Lean what it is today.