Step 1. Why every CEO should play the DisruptR game with their team

In a world marked by uncertainty, acceleration, and disruption, a new responsibility rests on the CEO’s shoulders. Not just to lead the company, but to future-proof it. Innovation is no longer optional, it’s a strategic imperative. This blog series (and accompanying FAQ) translates the RevelX CEO Innovation Guide into practical insights and action steps for every CEO and Managing Director.

1. Why Innovation belongs on the CEO agenda
2. Innovation governance: Why every CEO needs a Growth Board
3. Step 1: Why every CEO should play the DisruptR game with their team
4. From chaos to capability: Why every CEO Needs to implement an Innovation Target Operating Model (iTOM)
5. The CEO innovation Q&A: Everything a leader needs to know about innovation

Let’s face it, most leadership teams talk about disruption. Very few truly act on it. And almost none are prepared for what it feels like when it hits.

So here’s a radical idea:

What if you designed the startup that’s going to destroy your own business, before someone else does?

That’s exactly what happens in DisruptR Game for CEOs, the serious business game developed by RevelX.

Every industry will be disrupted, yours included. The question is not if, but when and more importantly: by whom?

Waiting is not a strategy. Hoping is not a defense. The best defense? Design your worst-case competitor yourself.

DisruptR is a high-impact game for senior leaders. Think of it as a workshop on steroids, fast-paced, energizing, and deeply revealing. Together with your executive team, you’ll simulate a competitor that could completely upend your market. And then? You’ll build the strategy to beat them before they emerge.

This is not theoretical. It’s not a brainstorm with Post-its. It’s structured. It’s real. It’s uncomfortable in the best way.And it works.

Disruption awareness can’t be delegated. It needs to be felt, viscerally, at the very top. When the CEO is in the room, it signals that innovation is not optional. It’s urgent. It’s now.

Playing DisruptR with your full leadership team:

• Creates a shared sense of vulnerability and opportunity
• Sparks radical thinking, free from day-to-day constraints
• Fosters alignment and ownership for transformative innovation
• Helps identify blind spots in your current business model
• Launches real initiatives not PowerPoint promises

1. You pick the target. A business line, a market, a portfolio.
2. You build the enemy. A fictitious but plausible disruptor.
3. You feel the threat. And discover where you’re truly vulnerable.
4. You strike back. With concrete innovation concepts and actions.

Along the way, your team uses best-in-class frameworks and canvasses guided by seasoned innovation facilitators. You leave with energy, clarity, and a bold new agenda.

• A clear picture of your organization’s disruption exposure
• 1–3 concrete innovation ideas, some radically new
• A stronger, more aligned leadership team
• A sense of urgency and momentum that can’t be taught in a slide deck

“The DisruptR game immediately led to three groundbreaking innovations.”
— CEO, Vanderlande, after a session that led to their revolutionary FLEET concept

Transformation won’t happen because you made a plan. It will happen because the pain of standing still becomes real and shared.

DisruptR makes that pain tangible. But more importantly: it gives you the tools, language, and leadership unity to turn it into action.

DisruptR has already changed the course of several industry leaders. Yours could be next.