Experience leadership at the threshold of human and artificial intelligence
Leadership learning begins with an experience
Getting the human-machine balance right has never mattered more
In the 1956 simulation, leaders face high-stakes decisions where human judgment and machine intelligence collide. Under real pressure, they discover the gap between what they think they would do and what they actually do.
1956 develops three capabilities that are vital for leaders in the age of AI: Decision-making, risk management and leading through complexity. Participants learn by living the experience first, then step back to make sense of what they went through.
- Professional actors
- Live AI
- Expert facilitation
- Real decisions
- Everyone learns
1956 is an immersive, experiential AI leadership simulation
- How long
- Four hours, with an optional further three hours of business school level teaching.
- How many
- 10 to 100 participants, or more. If your group is larger, we're happy to discuss your needs.
- Where it runs
- Business school custom and open executive education, corporate universities, and other learning and development settings.
- Where in the world
- Globally. We have fifteen years' experience designing and deploying immersive leadership development products across 15 countries, with 15,000 business leaders participating.
The simulation is built for leaders at any level
1956: AI Leadership Simulation™ is designed to be used in leadership development programmes in businesses, business schools and other organisations. Participants who have benefited have included first line leaders, leaders of leaders, high potentials, executives and many others.
No prior experience with AI is required. All we ask is that participants already have leadership experience, however junior or senior.
If you want to inspire people to lead well in the context of AI in a hands-on, rigorous and experiential way, this simulation might be for you.
What participants say
“The narrative architecture of 1956 is remarkably sophisticated. What struck me most was how the simulation sustains genuine intellectual tension across the full arc of the experience. Participants are not performing leadership; they are exercising it, under conditions that expose both the power and the limits of AI with real precision. I have encountered nothing else quite like it in executive education.”
Dr. Vincent van Bever Donker
Lecturer, University of Buckingham
“Fantastic learnings on an important topic! The 1956 AI Leadership Simulation highlighted the importance of understanding both bias and expected outcomes in AI models. The way a model is trained, along with any biases present in the data it learns from, can significantly influence its outputs. Would recommend to any leader wanting to understand the nuances of the AI world!”
Teddy Stopford
Associate, McKinsey & Company
“Through spending an enjoyable afternoon participating in 1956 I was able to have a better understanding of how the abstract concepts of machine learning and algorithms suddenly become very real and tangible. The eye-opener was seeing how the unique limitations of each AI system directly dictated success. Each system isn't just a black box of intelligence; it is entirely bound by its specific logic, constraints, and architecture.”
Dianne Bates-Brownsword
Head of Lower School, Headington School Oxford
“The simulation was engaging, fast paced, and genuinely thought-provoking. It challenged me to make decisions under pressure, work through ambiguity with my team, and reflect on the balance between technology and human judgement.”
Leila Hoffpauir
MBA Candidate, Saïd Business School and MSc Candidate, Oxford Internet Institute
Every 1956 experience begins with a conversation
Tell us about your cohort and we'll explore with you from there.