Description:

A participatory LAB combining e-sports play, a visit to the UiA e-sports lab, and a panel discussion on how companye-sports functions as a human-centered laboratory for collaboration, leadership, and learning in hybrid organizations.

E-sports has recently gone through what many call an “e-sports winter”: shrinking budgets, restructurings, and the limits of sponsorship-driven spectacle have become visible. Yet beneath this turbulence, something important is happening: value is shifting toward e-sports as a people-centered digital infrastructure, embedded in education, workplaces, and communities. In these settings, e-sports is less about being watched and more about being used as a structured environment where collaboration and digital participation become tangible.

This Action Lab invites EURAM participants to explore company e-sports through direct experience. The lab combines hands-on gameplay in the University of Agder’s e-sports facilities with guided reflection and a panel discussion on what organizations can learn from e-sports about hybrid teamwork, distributed leadership, inclusion, and sustainable digital work cultures. The session is hosted by Tobias Scholz of FLARE (Future Lab for Academic Research in e-sports).

Why play? Because e-sports makes otherwise “invisible” organizational dynamics observable in real time: who coordinates, who supports, how teams communicate under time pressure, how roles emerge, and how people adapt when the environment changes. To translate this experience into management language, the lab draws on the metaframe approach, which distinguishes between Personal Mastery (how individuals learn, regulate, and develop) and Team Synergy (how teams amplify performance through role complementarity and coordination).

The second half of the lab opens the discussion to practice: what does company e-sports look like “for real,” and when does it create meaningful value beyond branding? We will explore applications such as recruitment and onboarding, team development, inclusion and belonging in fragmented workplaces, and the ethics of observation and assessment in digital environments.

No priore-sports experience is needed. You do not need to be a “gamer” to join, this is an interactive format designed for curiosity, learning, and discussion.

Program:

10:15  Travel (public transport).

Participants travel by bus 100 from Universitetet Kristiansand to Universitetet Grimstad.

10:45  E-sports Lab Experience (play + guided introduction)

Hands-on gameplay in UiA’s e-sports lab, with an introduction by FLARE and UiA students. We use play as a structured situation to surface teamwork dynamics and to connect them to the dual lens of Personal Mastery and Team Synergy. 

12:00   Lunch at UiA

Networking and informal reflection on what participants observed: communication patterns, coordination, leadership, inclusion, and learning behaviors in a digital team setting.

13:00   Panel Discussion (Room C2 042): “Company e-sports and Digital Work”

Moderated discussion on company e-sports as an organizational practice and research context: where it can create sustainable value, what risks it entails, and how we can study it rigorously.

Panelist: Anders Aasgaard, Vice President, Head of Development and Applications, Gard

Moderator: Tobias Scholz, Professor for Academic E-sports, University of Agder