The Dating Game, Survivor, and other war games: interesting, enjoyable and effective methods for conducting collaborative research

The paper discusses the collaborative research methodologies and techniques developed by the Naval War College's Decision Strategies Department (DSD), and how these techniques have allowed the DSD to meet the diverse research requirements of senior naval and government decision makers. The Decision Strategies Departments "experts at talking to experts" collaborative research process is discussed, as are some of the techniques the department employs to make this research approach interesting and enjoyable for their "decision event" participants, as well as effective at generating the research data necessary to address the decision maker or research sponsor's questions. The paper describes how this research approach evolved, why it is different from traditional research or war gaming, and the type of research requirements that caused this approach to be developed. The paper discusses the lessons learned from using this research process, and some of the ways that the department disseminates the results of its work. Also discussed are two DSD research projects that illustrate different approaches to this type of collaborative research, and that contain examples of techniques that can even make this type of collaborative research fun!.