- Suppose you win the lottery. Not sure what to do with all of your money, on an impulse you decide to buy
a local college as you want to make a positive impact in your community. However, you soon find yourself a bit
over your head as all day you have employees or students coming to your office with all kinds of advice,
suggestions for changes that should be made, complaints, etc. Never having run a college before, you are a bit
confused about how to deal with all of this input and you don’t really have a good idea about what to focus on.
The college has about 300 employees and 800 students and want to find a way to get some more organized
input and creative ideas for improving the college. Should you use Open Space Technology, Future Search, or
neither? Explain your reasoning and justify your answer using at least two of the readings from the background
materials.
- A video game company starts out with five undergraduate students living in a dorm, but rapidly grows
within three years to around 50 employees and $10 million a year in annual revenues. While the company is
still expected rapid growth, there is still sharp tension between the very young video game designers and the
older and more experienced executives who run the finance and marketing departments. In particular, the
younger employees strive to develop new video games that are unique and much different than any other
games available. However, the more experienced executives wish to take a more conservative route and come
out with games that are similar to popular games produced by their competitors. The five founding partners are
not sure which of these two directions to take and wish to receive input from all of their employees through
some type of formal process. Should the CEO use Open Space Technology, Future Search, or neither? Explain
your reasoning and justify your answer using at least two of the readings from the background materials.
- An insurance company has most of its employees in three different departments – sales, accounting, and
information technology. The CEO is always receiving input from the sales department, as most of the
salesforce is very outgoing and they don’t hesitate to give their opinions or make requests. On the other hand,
employees in accounting and information technology tend to be quiet and shy and rarely speak up. The CEO
notices that there is considerably higher turnover in the accounting and information technology departments,
and thus becomes concerned that perhaps employees in these departments are leaving because they are
dissatisfied with decisions the CEO has made or because they feel the salesforce is overly favored. There are
about 50 employees in each department. The CEO wishes to find a process by which a wider range of
employee input can be obtained. Should the CEO use Open Space Technology, Future Search, or neither?
Explain your reasoning and justify your answer using at least two of the readings from the background
materials.
- A CEO initiates an Open Space Technology conference. At the start of the conference, the CEO
provides a list of topics he wants covered and also gives his opinion on what kind of outcomes he wants from
the conference. He also makes attendance at the conference mandatory. When the conference starts,
participants all volunteer to give sessions on the topics proposed by the CEO. A few participants propose to
give sessions on other topics not mentioned by the CEO, but very few employees come to these sessions and
instead go to the sessions covering topics suggested by the CEO. At the end of the conference, the CEO is
presented with a carefully worded summary of the conference and given conclusions that the CEO wanted to
hear. However, after the conference ends and employees go back to work they are very slow at implementing
the recommendations from the conference. What do you think went wrong? Which major principles or concepts
of Open Space Technology do you think the CEO violated? Explain you