1The Challenge
What was the challenge?
Schaeffler brought a substantial group — 200 people split across 20 teams — together in Mahabalipuram, with a brief centred on energy and ideas: fun, sparking energy, problem solving, innovation, and creativity.
The scale is the story here. Twenty teams in one room generates enormous energy, but it also generates twenty separate agendas. The risk with a group this size isn't flatness — it's fragmentation. Keeping 200 people genuinely engaged, thinking creatively rather than just competitively, and pushing toward real problem solving rather than noise, takes an activity with enough depth to reward the sharp teams without losing the rest.
2Our Solution
What solution did we design?
The Lost Dutchman was built for a room like this. It's a strategy simulation in which teams plan an expedition, manage limited resources, and make decisions across a series of rounds — and it carries a quiet trap in its scoring. Teams instinctively play to beat the other 19, then discover that the genuinely optimal strategy involved cooperating across teams, not just outmanoeuvring them. The best result was available the whole time; most groups only recognise it looking back.
For Schaeffler's brief, the fit is strong. The competitive frame delivers the energy and the fun immediately, while the resource-and-strategy layer gives 20 teams a real problem to solve rather than a game to merely play. The innovation and creativity come from teams working out their own approach under constraint — and the debrief turns the whole thing into a shared insight about problem solving at scale, where the cleverest individual strategy still left value on the table.
The Lost Dutchman ran alongside Drone Around the World, giving the day a second, more kinetic challenge to balance the strategic depth of the simulation.
3How We Did It
How was the programme delivered?
The 200 participants were organised into 20 teams and taken through The Lost Dutchman's planning and decision rounds, weighing resources and strategy under a competitive frame that felt natural from the outset. A team of three facilitators ran the programme — the coordination backbone a 200-person, 20-team activity requires to keep every team briefed, paced, and in sync.
Facilitators observed how the room behaved: which teams treated the others purely as rivals, which sensed the cooperative opportunity, and how groups responded as the scoring logic revealed itself. Those observations anchored a debrief that connected the simulation back to Schaeffler's themes — how creative problem solving often means questioning the frame you've been handed, and how the best outcome for the room required seeing past the instinct to win your own round.
4Key Outcomes
What were the results?
The Lost Dutchman gave Schaeffler's 200 participants a shared, high-energy demonstration of a subtle lesson: the smartest strategy isn't always the most competitive one. Across 20 teams, the room experienced the gap between winning locally and achieving the best result collectively.
Across a full day in Mahabalipuram, the programme kept 200 people engaged, energised, and thinking — and closed on a problem-solving insight a room of that size could feel first-hand rather than simply be told.