How a playful approach and role-playing games are revolutionising export training and preparing professionals for the challenges of international business — even on the driest of topics.
- You've all seen "Stranger Things". I was the age of the main characters in the mid-80s, and I was a dedicated role-play gamer — as a player and as a game master… That gave me a few teaching ideas.
- For 25 years, I negotiated contracts in Shanghai, managed multicultural teams and structured distribution networks across Asia-Pacific. One thing became certain: export is not mastered through theory, but through experience. So how do you transmit that experience without discouraging every learner?
The answer: serious games — those immersive simulations that compress years of practice into a few intensive days. At MAGELLAN DNA, we have developed unique pedagogical tools that plunge students and professionals into the arena of international business. A journey into the Dungeons & Dragons of Incoterms…
- Serious Game Incoterms®: The Sinking of the MOL Comfort
- On June 17, 2013, the container ship MOL Comfort broke in two in the Indian Ocean. 4,382 containers lost at sea. Millions of euros in cargo gone. A logistical and legal catastrophe — but thankfully not a human one. This real-world case became our flagship serious game.
- To understand, for each Incoterm® ICC 2020, the allocation of risks and costs, transport organisation, the documentary chain, customs formalities… and know how to choose the most appropriate Incoterm® in a crisis situation.
- Participants are split into cross-disciplinary teams (exporter, importer, shipowner, insurer, freight forwarder, bank). My products were on that ship in 2013. The vessel sinks. Who pays? Who bears the risks? How do you manage the client relationship? What new Incoterm® do you negotiate? And how do you recover the deal after missing the trial order?
- Phase 1 - Team Assembly: Use of a Big Five-adapted psychometric test to build balanced, high-performing teams.
- Phase 2- Theory Input: We review all 11 Incoterms, ask the right questions through concrete cases to choose the right Incoterm for the deal at hand, and select the classification and synthesis method that works best for each participant.
- Phase 3 - Quiz "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire — Export Edition?": Teams compete in a game-show-style quiz on Incoterms to earn bonuses usable during the serious game, inspired by the TV show.
- Phase 4 - The Sinking: The disaster is announced. Each team — composed of one representative from each impacted function — must negotiate with other stakeholders and find commercial, industrial and logistics solutions.
- Phase 5 - Reboot: Selection of a new Incoterm® ICC 2020 for a fresh shipment if a solution is found internally and externally, using the SPIDER method (a hexagonal decision-support tool).
- Teaching Tools:
- Theoretical presentations on Incoterms® ICC 2020
- The quiz & the role-play
- Best practices and real-life anecdotes
- Brainstorming on cases brought by participants
- Decision tree and 5-step method for choosing the right Incoterm®
- Summary tools
- Concrete cases for selecting the right Incoterm® ICC 2020
- Handout: "Top 20 tips Incoterms® ICC 2020"strong>"
- Written and digital materials
- Résult? Abstract concepts become concrete. Participants viscerally understand thatEXW ≠ FCA ≠ FOB ≠ CIF ≠ DAP ≠ DDP — and above all, they now know why and in what context to choose one over another.
- Training becomes experience. Boredom turns into adrenaline. Incoterms® become a strategic lever, not an administrative constraint.
Export — finally accessible. Our promise at MAGELLAN DNA is to make export accessible. Accessible to students who have never set foot at an international trade fair. Accessible to professionals who need to upskill fast. Accessible to SMIs that cannot afford to learn by trial and error on foreign markets. Serious games do not replace field experience. They anticipate it, accelerate it, make it less costly. They create a safe space where failure is instructive, where mistakes carry no financial consequences — but where the lessons are unforgettable.
Because in the end, what matters is not what you know. It's what you are capable of doing when everything becomes uncertain.
