Serious gaming as a tool to facilitate inclusive business; a review of untapped potential

Inclusive Business (IB) is increasingly popular as a way to address the sustainable development goals (SDG) by including the poor in business. While the IB model is commonly believed capable of making a real impact on poverty reduction, it is not without critique. With the empirical evidence still largely lacking, and with continued power imbalances and knowledge disparity among actors, the question of how much IB as a top-down business-led approach can push towards the SDG agenda remains unanswered. New inclusive business models need to be developed, based on inclusive decision-making throughout the value chain. Here, we show the untapped potential of serious gaming, that is, games for serious purposes rather than entertainment, as a ‘truly’ inclusive approach to facilitate IB.