I have been in the Productivity consulting business for close to 50 years. During that time, I spent a considerable amount of time doing training of our company’s internal employees. This meant that they were extraordinarily well-prepared to work with and to insure that they could train not only first-line supervisors but also all levels of management in an organization that we were doing a project with. When I first started doing this type of training we were just opening up to the use of personal computers. We were just learning about Emails, Power Point Presentations and Spreadsheets. Yes, I am that old., and thank you Microsoft what you did to bring us into the future. But over the 25 years in which I was doing internal training, we expanded into such things as video training, macros, and on and on. We were one of the first consulting companies to use video-taped role playing with facilities that included a “tv studio” outfitted to look like a CEO’s office with built-in cameras, microphones, and mirrors which reflected the facial images of the participants. We were then able to project these videos live to the remainder of the class in their classrooms. The taped results could then be used for feedback to the watching class and later to the person who was “presenting” to the CEO.
I came across the following Wall Street Journal article written by their journalist Natasha Khan earlier this year on an even more novel way to train potential executives in preparation of these trainees becoming future members of the C-Suite. My goodness, such a fascinating way Hasbro found to prepare executives for their upcoming roles. So thank you Hasbro, the Wall Street Journal and Natasha Khan on introducing me and hopefully other readers of this blog of this unique and incredibly interesting way to train future executives.
Hasbro’s Secret Weapon for Training Its Next Leaders: A Board Game
Up-and-coming managers role play as toy industry CEOs in an in-house strategy game that tests their mettle for decision-making
By
Jan. 1, 2026 at 7:00 am ET
‘Toy Tycoon,’ Hasbro’s internal game, has been captivating promising managers in the company.NATASHA KHAN/WSJ
Quick Summary
- Hasbro developed “Toy Tycoon,” a strategy game for select employees to simulate CEO decisions in the toy industry.View more
PAWTUCKET, R.I.—The maker of Candyland, Monopoly and Scrabble has a new board game on its hands.
But it is only for a select group of Hasbro employees. “Toy Tycoon” is a role-playing strategy game for up-and-coming leaders. Promising managers inside Hasbro chosen to play the game become CEOs for the day, facing decisions like whether to push into electronic games or go all-in on plush toys.
Is that Marvel or Pokémon license worth it? How about that star hire? How much product should they produce? Did they hit the plan communicated to Wall Street?
“I think the job of a CEO is very similar to a grand strategy game,” said Hasbro Chief Executive Chris Cocks.
A Dungeons & Dragons fan, Cocks brought the idea of “Toy Tycoon” to Hasbro from Microsoft, where he played a similar simulation game.
“Moving pieces on a complex game board has a lot of dynamism around it,” he said. “I’ve always thought about business that way, and that’s partially why I like it.”
Promising managers at Hasbro play at the company’s Pawtucket headquarters, after a two-day crash course in business and the toy industry taught by Cocks, Chief Financial Officer Gina Goetter and Chief People Officer Holly Barbacovi.
The game takes a full day. Under the direction of a game master, players confront a series of scenarios testing their managerial mettle. Every round corresponds to a year. The game heats up as each round goes by.
Recently Kate Fakonas, a senior director of product design for Play-Doh and Nerf products, and Stephanie Buscher, vice president of supply planning, took part as co-CEOs competing against other teams.
The two had never met before pairing up. Their assignment: building and dominating toy markets armed with two brands, Super Soaker and My Little Pony. Their rivals were three other pairs of colleagues.
The contestants sat around a table at the “University of Play” conference room at Hasbro’s offices in a converted brick mill building.
In the center was a giant board with the categories—toy segments such as dolls and collectibles, plush and interactive, action figures and play sets—while each pair of “CEOs” had in front of them their cards and a phone with only the game loaded so contestants could check their progress.
'Toy Tycoon' challenges executives on managing their company's resources—and pivoting when plans fall apart.
As soon as Fakonas and Buscher sat down, they had to make a frenzy of decisions, including how much product to order and money to earmark for innovation—as well as profit, dividends and sales to promise investors.
“It struck me immediately how fast it pulls you into a very real-feeling environment,” Fakonas said.
Sharp increases in freight costs caused skyrocketing expenses. Then dwindling demand for legacy categories required each player to enter a new category. If a player chooses wrongly, all market share could be lost.
Meanwhile, players also battle each other to secure star talent and license hot brands. Often, they egg each other on, cheer and raise their hands in celebration or disappointment.
The goal of the game is to help the player executives think through how to manage their company’s cash, time and other resources—and pivoting when the most thoughtful plans are torpedoed.
Players aim to build a brand, scale a business and smartly apply market research. Milestones include hiring the best talent, controlling inventory and dominating a category.
The game fuses board-game elements with an electronic component.NATASHA KHAN/WSJ
Over the course of the game, a market leader emerges. Players are rewarded with perks for ascending to “category captain” because their product gains the most share of, say, the plush sector.
Players can lose all their market share in one year, however, though they can claw back if they make a shrewd investment and it pays off.
“It gave me a much broader perspective of what it takes to run a business,” Fakonas said.
Also a benefit: Players can observe their own management style. What is their appetite for risk? Should one give a lowball forecast to investors only to over deliver later, or be ambitious and do everything possible to stick to the promised goal?
Fakonas and Buscher ended up winning after five rounds, beating out rival teams by having what the game master calculated was the highest market capitalization.
“We had to balance being responsive to the market without being too reactive to it,” Buscher said.
She said she went back to curious colleagues with a broadened view of how the business is run.
But she has tried not to reveal too much about the game to anyone who might play in the future to preserve the element of surprise.
Copyright ©2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the January 2, 2026, print edition as 'Hasbro Has a Secret Weapon For Training Leaders: a Game'.
Natasha Khan is a business reporter at The Wall Street Journal, covering American consumer giants, the forces driving the global consumer economy and trends reshaping the industry’s best-known brands. Prior to joining the Journal's corporate bureau in New York, Natasha spent more than a decade as a foreign correspondent focusing primarily on China. Among her coverage: a series of stories investigating the wealth of China’s ruling class; closely covering the characters and wider issues driving the Hong Kong protests and the city’s political turmoil; and being the first to report, in early 2020, that China had discovered a new coronavirus.
Natasha’s work has been recognized by numerous honors, including—with colleagues—the George Polk Award for foreign reporting, the Overseas Press Club Award for Best Investigative Reporting and the Gerald Loeb Award for International Reporting, and as a two-time finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists.
She holds bachelor’s degrees in law and business, and a master's in journalism from the University of Hong Kong. Natasha is a Class of 2023 Nieman fellow at Harvard University. She joined the Journal in 2017 from Bloomberg News.
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