For Educators

Who Is It For?

Build, Bin, Boost is designed for business school teaching, particularly:

Masters in Management

Programmes covering innovation and technology strategy

MBA Electives

R&D management and corporate entrepreneurship

Undergraduate Electives

Innovation management, entrepreneurship, or technology strategy

Executive Education

Programmes for R&D leaders and product managers

Learning Objectives

Through gameplay, students learn to:

•Design selection processes — Choose decision-making structures and evaluation approaches, understanding how process design affects outcomes
•Evaluate innovation proposals — Assess technical feasibility, market potential, strategic alignment, and team capability
•Balance portfolio risk — Mix incremental improvements with transformational bets to achieve strategic objectives
•Make tough resource allocation decisions — Categorise projects and allocate limited budgets across competing opportunities
•Manage portfolios actively over time — Decide when to persist with struggling projects and when to cut losses
•Navigate organisational dynamics — Handle real-world situations like team conflicts, budget pressures, competitor moves, and political considerations
•Recognise decision-making biases — Understand how committee composition, evaluation methods, and cognitive biases affect selection outcomes
•Assess the costs and benefits of using AI in decision-making — Explore how AI advice might shape decisions in R&D project contexts

How to Use in Teaching

The simulation works well as:

Pre-Class Preparation

Students play before a session on portfolio management, bringing their results and experiences to discussion. The downloadable case study PDF provides a ready-made artefact for class.

In-Class Activity

A 60–90 minute guided session where students play and then debrief together. Works well in computer labs or with students on their own laptops.

Assessment Component

Students submit their downloaded case study PDF with reflection reports analysing their decisions and outcomes. The simulation generates unique results for each playthrough.

Group Exercise

Teams play together, discussing and debating each decision. This mirrors real-world committee dynamics and adds a collaborative dimension to the learning.

Team Play & Competition

Build, Bin, Boost works as both an individual and team activity. Here are several ways to introduce collaboration and competition:

Team-Based Play

Assign students to teams of 3–5 and have them play the simulation together on a single screen. Teams must discuss and agree on each decision—which projects to fund, what to bin, and what to boost. This mirrors real-world R&D committee dynamics and produces rich debate about risk, strategy, and resource allocation.

Competitive Tournaments

Run the simulation as a class tournament. Each team (or individual) plays independently, then compare final scores—revenue generated, portfolio success rates, and board ratings. Rank teams on a leaderboard and discuss why different strategies led to different outcomes. This adds energy and motivation to the learning experience.

Role Assignment

Within teams, assign roles that mirror real organisations: a Chief Technology Officer, a Finance Director, a Strategy Lead. Each role-holder advocates for decisions from their perspective, creating productive tension and forcing negotiation—just like real portfolio governance.

Cross-Team Debrief

After play, have teams present their strategies and results to the class. Compare approaches: Did cautious teams outperform risk-takers? Did committee-based selectors beat individual decision-makers? The variation in outcomes provides rich material for discussion about portfolio management theory.

Pairing with Case Studies

The simulation is designed to complement traditional case-based teaching. Consider pairing it with:

Before a Case Discussion

Have students play the simulation before studying a real-world R&D portfolio case. Their gameplay experience gives them first-hand intuition about the trade-offs and pressures involved in project selection, making the case discussion more grounded and personal.

After a Case Discussion

Use the simulation to test whether students can apply lessons from the case. After analysing how a company managed its innovation portfolio, students play the simulation and reflect on whether they followed the same principles—or fell into the same traps.

Suggested Case Pairings

The simulation pairs well with cases on R&D portfolio management, stage-gate processes, innovation strategy, and corporate venturing. It is particularly effective alongside cases that explore how large firms manage project selection under uncertainty and organisational politics.

Reflective Comparison

Ask students to write a short reflection comparing their simulation decisions to the case protagonist's choices. What did they do similarly? Where did they diverge? What does this reveal about their own decision-making biases?

Discussion Questions

Suggested questions for classroom debrief:

•How did your selection process affect which projects got funded?
•What signals did you use to decide whether to continue or kill a project?
•How did you balance safe bets against riskier transformational projects?
•What would you do differently if you played again?
•How did committee composition and dynamics shape your decisions?
•Did you find it harder to kill projects or to take risks on uncertain ones? Why?
•How did the board's strategic priorities constrain or guide your portfolio?

Technical Requirements

What You Need

✓Modern web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge)
✓Desktop or laptop (recommended)
✓Internet connection to load the page

What You Don't Need

✗No installation required
✗No student accounts or logins
✗No license fees
✗No IT department involvement

Licence & Usage Rights

Build, Bin, Boost is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence. This means:

You Are Free To

✓Use — Play and deploy the simulation in your courses at no cost, with no per-student charges or institutional agreements
✓Adapt — Modify the source code, change scenarios, add new projects, adjust parameters, or translate into other languages
✓Share — Redistribute the original or your modified version to colleagues and other educators
✓Host — Run your own copy on your institution’s servers or learning management system

Under These Conditions

ⓘAttribution — Give appropriate credit to the original author (Ammon Salter, Warwick Business School, University of Warwick) and indicate if changes were made
ⓘNonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes (selling access, including in paid training packages, etc.)
ⓘShareAlike — If you remix or build upon the simulation, you must distribute your contributions under the same CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence

No paperwork required. You do not need to contact us for permission to use the simulation in your teaching. Simply use it, cite it, and share any improvements with the community.

Customise & Develop New Versions

Build, Bin, Boost is designed to be modified and extended. The entire simulation is a single HTML file with no server dependencies, making it straightforward to customise:

Modify the Scenario

Change the company setting, industry context, or strategic priorities to match your teaching focus. The simulation’s project database, event system, and scoring parameters are all configurable within the source code.

Add New Projects

Create new R&D project proposals that reflect specific industries, technologies, or innovation challenges relevant to your curriculum. Each project has attributes for feasibility, novelty, strategic alignment, and team capability.

Adjust Difficulty & Parameters

Tune the budget constraints, number of rounds, scoring weights, or event probabilities to create easier or more challenging versions for different student levels—from undergraduate introductions to executive masterclasses.

Build Discipline-Specific Versions

Adapt the simulation for pharmaceutical R&D, software product development, clean energy innovation, or any other sector. The modular design supports creating multiple variants from the same codebase.

Open Source & Community

Build, Bin, Boost is an open-source project that welcomes contributions from educators, developers, and researchers worldwide:

Source Code on GitHub

The full source code is available on GitHub. Fork the repository to start building your own version, or submit pull requests to improve the core simulation for everyone.

Community Contributions Welcome

We encourage educators to share their adaptations, additional project scenarios, teaching guides, and assessment rubrics. By contributing back to the project, you help build a richer resource for the entire teaching community.

Report Issues & Suggest Features

Found a bug or have an idea for improvement? Open an issue on GitHub. We actively review feedback and incorporate community suggestions into future releases.

No Technical Barriers

The simulation is built entirely in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript—no frameworks, no build tools, no server required. Any web developer (or technically inclined educator) can read, understand, and modify the code. This deliberate simplicity lowers the barrier to community participation.

Background Reading

Academic research that informed the simulation.

▶ View 14 references

•Brasil, V.C. and Eggers, J.P. (2019). Product and innovation portfolio management. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Business and Management.
•Brasil, V.C., Salerno, M.S., Eggers, J.P. and Gomes, L.A.V. (2021). Boosting radical innovation using ambidextrous portfolio management. Research-Technology Management, 64(5), 39-49.
•Boudreau, K.J., Guinan, E.C., Lakhani, K.R. and Riedl, C. (2016). Looking across and looking beyond the knowledge frontier. Management Science, 62(10), 2765-2783.
•Cooper, R.G. and Sommer, A.F. (2023). Dynamic portfolio management for new product development. Research-Technology Management, 66(3), 19-31.
•Criscuolo, P., Dahlander, L., Grohsjean, T. and Salter, A. (2017). Evaluating novelty: The role of panels in the selection of R&D projects. Academy of Management Journal, 60(2), 433-460.
•Criscuolo, P., Dahlander, L., Grohsjean, T. and Salter, A. (2021). The sequence effect on the selection of R&D projects. Organization Science, 32(4), 1046-1067.
•Dahlander, L., Beretta, M., Thomas, A., Kazemi, S., Fenger, M.H. and Frederiksen, L. (2023). Weeding out or picking winners in open innovation? Research Policy, 52(10), 104875.
•Dahlander, L., Thomas, A., Wallin, M.W. and Ångström, R.C. (2023). Blinded by the person? Experimental evidence from idea evaluation. Strategic Management Journal, 44(10), 2443-2459.
•Kumar, A. and Operti, E. (2023). Missed chances and unfulfilled hopes. Strategic Management Journal, 44(13), 3067-3097.
•Masucci, M., Parker, S.C., Brusoni, S. and Camerani, R. (2021). How are corporate ventures evaluated and selected? Technovation, 99, 102126.
•Mount, M.P., Baer, M. and Lupoli, M.J. (2021). Quantum leaps or baby steps? Strategic Management Journal, 42(8), 1490-1515.
•Sharapov, D. and Dahlander, L. (2025). Selection regimes and selection errors. Organization Science.
•Si, H., Kavadias, S. and Loch, C. (2022). Managing innovation portfolios. Production and Operations Management, 31(12), 4572-4588.
•Wilden, R., Lin, N., Hohberger, J. and Randhawa, K. (2023). Selecting innovation projects. Journal of Management Studies, 60(7), 1720-1751.

How to Cite

If you use this simulation in your teaching or research:

APA Style

Salter, A. (2025). Build, Bin, Boost: The R&D Portfolio Simulation [Computer software]. Warwick Business School, University of Warwick. https://buildbinboost.org

Harvard Style

Salter, A. (2025) Build, Bin, Boost: The R&D Portfolio Simulation. Warwick Business School, University of Warwick. Available at: https://buildbinboost.org (Accessed: [date]).

BibTeX

@software{salter2025buildbinboost,
  author = {Salter, Ammon},
  title = {Build, Bin, Boost: The R&D Portfolio Simulation},
  year = {2025},
  publisher = {Warwick Business School, University of Warwick},
  url = {https://buildbinboost.org}
}