Supercell's culture redefines failure. Instead of punishing unsuccessful projects, they are treated as learning experiments. The company literally celebrates killing a game with champagne, reinforcing that learning from a false hypothesis is a valuable outcome.
Supercell engineered a unique acquisition deal with SoftBank. They sold a 51% majority stake, providing liquidity to early investors, but negotiated to have all creative and operational control contractually returned to the founding team. This provided capital without sacrificing their culture or independence.
Supercell rejected traditional top-down hierarchy. Instead, they empower small, autonomous teams ('cells') with full creative ownership over their games. Management's role is to support these cells, much like a record label supports its artists, not dictate creative direction.
To combat complacency, Supercell's CEO opened an all-hands meeting by showing an animated slide of their declining global ranking year-by-year. This act of transparent and painful self-critique from the top created the psychological safety and urgency needed to rally the team around a new strategy.
To reignite growth, Supercell created two distinct operating models. Teams managing existing hit games adopted a 'scale-up' playbook, focusing on iteration with larger teams. Teams developing new titles operated like independent 'startups,' focused on high-risk innovation with small, agile teams.
Supercell avoids emotional decision-making by being radically transparent with data. A daily email with key metrics for every game is sent to the entire company. This ensures everyone understands the performance criteria and accepts the rigorous, data-driven decisions to kill projects that don't meet specific thresholds.