The people and the research

Field-tested where business is hardest.

Force Majeure is built on decades of fieldwork in conflict and crisis economies by two researchers whose work has been nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize. No competitor can claim a record like this, which is why the evidence leads.

The finding the game is calibrated to

The authors’ 2021 Harvard Business Review study of businesses across seven crisis-hit cities found that firms embedded in their communities were about 3× more likely to stay profitable and 9× more likely to survive a crisis. Force Majeure turns that finding into a game: the community-embedded play wins because the evidence says it does. Read the article →

Who built it

Two researchers, decades in the hardest markets.

Jason Miklian
Research Professor, Centre for Development & the Environment, University of Oslo
  • Member, UN Working Group on Business & Human Rights
  • Two-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, 2024 & 2025 (business & peace)
  • 75+ publications since 2010; Cambridge University Press author (2023, 2024)
  • Fieldwork: Colombia, Myanmar, Lebanon, India, Bangladesh
  • Cited by the New York Times, BBC, The Economist, Foreign Policy
John E. Katsos
Professor of Management, Strategy & Entrepreneurship, American University of Sharjah
  • Editor-in-Chief, Society and Business Review
  • Chair, UN PRME Business for Peace Working Group
  • Two-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee, 2024 & 2025 (business & peace)
  • Research Affiliate, Queen’s University Belfast
  • Fieldwork: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Cyprus, Sri Lanka, Ukraine

The framework underneath

The four-part formula is the hidden scoring spine.

Drawn from the casebook, these four are how the engine scores every decision. Players never see a lecture on them. They experience the consequences of honoring or breaking each one.

01

Live Authentic Values

What you actually do under pressure, not what your policy says.

02

Support Community

The legitimacy that buys security and continuity when a crisis hits.

03

Culture as System

Treating local culture as operating reality, not a compliance checkbox.

04

Communicate Clearly

Trust held or lost in how you speak when the stakes are highest.


The published work

The simulation rests on a body of peer-reviewed work.

2023

Crisis: A Global Primer

Cambridge University Press. The framework that became the game.

2024

Ethical Leadership in Polycrisis

Cambridge University Press. Evidence from leaders on leading through crisis.

2025

Crisis: A Global Case Primer

Cambridge University Press and Bridgebuilders Books. The case base the scenarios draw from.


What we can show, and what is coming

Honest about the evidence.

The method rests on solid ground: experiential learning outperforms lecture by a measurable margin in the peer-reviewed literature. A pre-registered study of Force Majeure’s own classroom effect is in preparation, and results will be posted here when they exist. We show what is proven today and name the rest plainly.

Coming to this page

Effectiveness study, in preparation

A pre-registered pre and post-test design across the first instructor cohort. We will publish the registration and, once data is in, the results, the way the strongest single-academic simulations do.

Early adopters help build that evidence and get the first pilot semester free.

Get involved

Run it with your team, teach it in your classroom, or join the first cohort.