InformatistBusinessSimulationGame

Kids can play the business simulation game “Informatist ”. It’s a free business game that’s available online. It’s great for the kids and their parents too. In fact friends can compete with each other and see who the best of them is. The free online business game can be easily played online and no software has to be downloaded. In fact the kids need to register and start playing. To ensure that no cheating takes place, players can check on usernames if they suspect that there is foul play. The “Multiple Account Search” feature can examine those who have been logging through the same IP address and the same computer for the last 30 days. If the system detects that there is some suspicious activity, it can suspend the account that will effectively disallow a person to login to the game.

Each business requires a set of skills in order to go ahead. Now kids can understand the value of learning skills and doing business. Informatist is a free business game that is available on the internet. This business simulation game allows kids also to play for free. Of course there is virtual money, with which they need to make all transactions. The business has 16 different industries and a set of skills have to be learned. In the business game, each player needs to learn a set of 16 skills. They have to learn the first skill before they can proceed to the next. Learning the skills requires fees, energy and time. They can hasten the time, but it costs them more in terms of energy. If they cancel the learning of the skill, then the money isn’t refunded back. Therefore kids need to be very careful when playing the game.

Online business learning? Sure, one can go to the University of Phoenix or a plethora of other business schools which offer an online undergraduate or graduate business degree (MBA).  The problem with these online approaches is that the business school education is time-consuming, expensive, and—dare we say it—boring to students who are spending years in school reading textbooks and listening to boring lectures.

Students and their parents know that business is more complex than simply learning rote analytical techniques.  While there is a place for technical learning in business—everything from business law to tax strategy to accounting—these are only tools which are used to achieve goals in business.  These tools are necessary, but not sufficient to create experienced business students with good judgment, and confidence that their judgments will be upheld in the harsh light of the business marketplace.

Online Business Simulation—Now for the High School and College Student.

Online business teaching need not be a repetition of in-classroom lectures.  Business simulation online is now available through a new site (http://www.informatist.net/ ), which allows high school and college students to learn important business principles online with their peers.  It complements, rather than supersedes, the book learning that college business students learn.  

Unlike the online business schools, the Informatist is free to all comers.  The online Informatist game allows thousands of students to gather online in a structured business environment which simulates the real world.  Students are given some resources—money, land, a profession and a series of things they can spend money on.  It’s important to note that there is no single ’solution’ to the business cases presented.  Rather, the students learn that there are several solutions to climbing the corporate ladder, through judicious use of people and resources to gain advantage over their competitors.

Business is Dynamic—Simulations Must Copy Business Dynamism.

Business is a dynamic field.  It is complicated by the number of people who are competing for customers, suppliers and team members who can help them achieve their economic goals.  Online games have created similar, people-driven dynamic environments which allow people to interact in a game setting.  With the tools developed for online gaming, business simulation is an obvious next step as a fun way to teach business with the complexity not found on a paper-driven case description.

In the Informatist business simulation model, resources are limited but can be expanded.  It’s clear that productivity will rise as people get better at their jobs.  There’s the opportunity to invest in training (at the cost of current profits, of course) of oneself and one’s employees, which makes the enterprise more efficient.  There’s also the opportunity to move to more-productive neighborhoods, and to create new businesses based on the profits produced in the past—again, not unlike how things are done in the ‘real’ business world.

Informatist Brings Dynamism to the Business Student.

The Informatist involves thousands of high school and college students in a massively-online gaming environment.  Since each student is making his or her own decisions based on the data they have at the time, the entire setting is as dynamic as it would be in the real world.

 

Business Simulation in an International Setting.

Before the advent of modern communications and travel, businesses used to be quite different in different regions of the world.  A “Malaysian business style” was very different than a “Chinese Business Style” in “Red” China , and the “US Business Style” was again regarded as strange by those in other parts of the world.

Modern telecommunications, led by the fax and telephone, brought real-time communication to far-flung offices around the world.  The age of the Multinational would not have come to pass without these modern tools of communication.

The Internet has changed things yet again, forcing various regional business styles to merge and morph as international competition  and sourcing has become the norm in the past decade.

Business Schools Remain Parochial.

In the past, business schools formed future executives based on regional business practices.  Most of the students in each business school in each region were more or less homogeneous, which lent to a single world view that may not have corresponded with that in other regions in the world.  The methods taught at Harvard or Stanford, while very different, were not at all like those taught at the London School of Economics or the Shanghai Business School .

“Regional” business practices are giving way to global business practices with the advent of new technologies.  There are three key factors which have driven this convergence:

·         MBA and undergraduate business school students are now traveling internationally to obtain a degree.  As they do so, they are able to pick up non-regional business management techniques that otherwise would not have been available to them.

·         Multinational corporations have successfully imposed a single corporate culture on their worldwide subsidiaries, which creates the necessity to overcome regional differences in business practice and create a single, global business ethic.

·         Modern business, practiced on an international scale, is much more interconnected than in the past.  Companies need to tie into customers and suppliers from around  the world, necessitating a convergence in business practices in order to smooth communication across regions.

Many business schools have not kept pace with this growing internationalization of business culture.  The so-called ‘business cases’ are generally written with a local or national business perspective, within a given cultural milieu which may not take into account the viewpoint of those from other regions.  While business cases create a semi-realistic environment in order to develop opinions and create business solutions, they may not recognize the cultural component of people from other regions.

Online Business Simulation—

to Work with Students from Around the World. New online business simulations use the simultaneous power of the Internet to allow students from several regions in the world to participate at the same time and on the same business problems.  Even if the students don’t speak a common language, the tools at (www.informatist.net ) . allow students to communicate across languages and cultures to enable international cooperation.

The case method, as taught at major business schools, has been shown over nearly a century to help turn students with academic backgrounds into experienced business competitors with good judgment—or at least the confidence that their judgments can prevail over others in meaningful ways.  Whether actual or imagined, business simulation can help students develop the decision tools that they need in order to succeed in the real business world.

The case method was developed in a way that allowed business school students to understand the environment of business decisions, form quick judgments, and come up with solutions that made good business sense.  In the past, such cases were painstakingly put together in fifty to one hundred page documents, with plenty of footnotes and spreadsheets to explain the business environment to the poor student who had to read two or three such cases each night.

The more modern way to understand such cases is to work with online tools, such as that available in the business game presented on the Informatist (www.informatist.net  . ), which is a new online business game which can involve thousands of people in a fun way that teaches important business skills to high school and college students hoping to get ahead in the business world.

Informatist Ties Together Students to Address Business Problems.

The Informatist is a free online game that uses business principles to allow students to compete.  Like all good simulations, students learn important business principles in many cases without realizing how much learning is actually going on.  Simulations teach through experience, and business requires experience in order to create good judgment, and enhance students’ confidence in the quality of their judgments to solve real problems.

How Informatist Works.

Informatist is free to join, but there are few simple requirements.  One must go to the website (www.informatist.net  . ) and sign on with an e-mail address and online name.  This is similar to almost all other massively online simulations games, such as Second Life. 

Once signed on, the participant is then given some land, some money, and the chance to improve himself or herself with a series of learning experiences.  Just as in the real world, the resources are limited, and one must choose carefully in order to gain maximum advantage.  Also as in the real world, competitors are given the same chances and start with a similar amount of resources.  The ‘game’ part of Informatist involves competing against a host of others, each of whom seeks to come to the top of the business heap in a very difficult environment.

As with the real world, one is able to coast along with a fairly working-class ethic, enjoying one’s resources on a hand-to-mouth basis and investing little in education or developing one’s staff.

The more capitalist competitors can choose to continually reinvest their profits in hiring good people and training them in clever ways to improve the status of the business.  Although one starts with a business, land and money, one must constantly produce a profit in order to stay in the game and reinvest for growth (sound familiar?). 

Unlike a print ‘case’ method, like that taught at elite business schools, the Informatist online game allows for competitors to react in real time.  An MBA student can become too confident in his or her ‘perfect’ solution because it seems logical and is well-presented to class the next day.  In the simulation, as in the real business world, competitors are unpredictable.  “Elegant” business solutions are not always the best, and the Informatist website points out the futility of making “the” right decision too late, rather than a “good” decision within a short period of time.

Business school simulation used to be the exclusive property of elite business schools like Kellogg, Harvard and Stanford.  Modern online gaming technology, using massively interactive databases and other online tools, has allowed high school and college students to learn basic business principles online without spending two years or one hundred thousand dollars in tuition at an elite school

While no one can replace a Harvard Business School education with an online tool, one can nevertheless use many of the same tools that develop America ’s next generation of businessmen using the tools of the Informatist online (www.informatist.net  . ).  The most well-known of these tools is the ‘case method,’ which ties in real world situations and interaction with competitors and team members in order to find solutions to real-world business problems.

The Case Method—Based on Print Medium.

Back in 1912, the only tools available to the new professors at Harvard’s Business School were to develop stories around business problems.  Each of these stories (and there are now over 30,000 such ‘cases’ at Harvard alone!) would focus on a problem facing one executive in a more-or-less real business situation.

These business ‘cases’ were developed by professors and students ‘in the field,’ going to companies and getting to know their business problems, and finding a particular issue that needs solving.  It typically took several months and a number of drafts before a ‘case’ became ready to share with students and professors. 

The MBA student would typically read three such cases each night, and would get together with a few other students to discuss their analysis of the case and possible solutions.  This collaboration was a key part of the business analysis process, as it demonstrated to students the value of synergy, coming up as a group with better solutions than the individual could come up with on his or her own.

The next day, the student would participate in a lively exchange with up to eighty other students and his or her professor to present their analysis and suggest solutions to the business problems at hand.  These lively discussions taught the student to test his or her hypothesis in the hard crucible of peer judgment. 

Although the presentation and criticism methods helped to produce better decisions, they were ’static’ rather than ‘active,’ not anticipating the reaction of competition or the creativity of other human beings on the opposite side of the problem.

Informatist—An Online Business Medium.

Now the Informatist brings the case method to massively online participation.  As with the case method, it requires the business student to acquire an understanding of the business environment, create novel solutions, and test those solutions against the hard crucible of competitors who are also online.  Unlike offline situations, these real, live, competitive human beings can come up with unpredictable methods—not unlike how business is conducted in the real world.

“Business” sounds boring to most high school and college students.  Many students think of the study of business as the rote learning of a large number of dry analytical techniques, such as accounting, decision analysis, microeconomics and decision theory.  While each of these tools is important to the solution of daily business problems, business is a lot more complex than the simple learning of mathematical and analytical techniques devoid of real world experience.  Business is complex because our modern world is complex, and it is made more complicated by the interaction of other smart business people from around the world, competing for the same resources in order to create superior value.

The Modern Business School Education Teaches More than Book Learning.

Business schools began in the early 1900’s.  Early business school professors realized that they had to rely on more than just rote learning to create the business leaders of tomorrow.  The theory at Harvard Business School , the first true MBA program in existence, was to give their budding businessmen and –women the tools they would need in order to encounter new problems, understand their environment and come up with solutions in a short period of time.  The Harvard professors realized that the best businesspeople developed good instincts, good judgment, based on experience rather than just analytical methodology.

How to impart instinct and judgment to young MBA students?  The case method, first developed at Harvard Business School , sought to give their budding businesspeople thirty years of experience in two years’ time.  They did so by presenting three fully-developed business cases per day, and requiring the student to develop an answer and defend it before the professor and his peers the next day.  This process combined the following aspects:

·         Understand the environment of the problem.  How does the industry work?  What are the key resources available to the manager?

·         Understand the competition: nothing occurs in a vacuum.  It is important to realize that there are others out there facing similar business problems, people who are out to take away market share—and resources—away from you and your team.

·         Work together with others in the company and outside allies to solve the problem.  This coalition building is an important part of marshalling resources to solve business problems.

·         Demonstrating in front of one’s peers that the recommended business solution would work.  In the classroom, that means presenting and defending one’s chosen solution.  Online, it involves a dynamic give-and-take between teams and individuals to demonstrate what really works—and what only sounds good.

Informatist Duplicates Business School Case Method.

The Informatist (www.informatist.net  . ) has managed to harness online gaming tools that have become available in recent years in order to present a realistic, interactive environment to students online.  While it doesn’t directly teach business theory, it forces the participants to develop their own solutions and defend them in the virtual world—a great analogue to how real business decisions are made.

Algebra, calculus, US history—American high school students have a panoply of regular courses that they must take in order to obtain a high school degree.  Only half of American high school graduates then complete a four-year degree in college.  It’s ironic that many of these students don’t have the opportunity to take a business course during their four-year high school studies.  And yet business is the area in which many high school graduates will end up after their studies.

How is one to close the gap between ‘book learning’ on esoteric subjects during high school, and imparting that which is necessary for students to know as they enter the business world?  Most of the high school students’ teachers have no experience in business.  They are typically newly-minted teachers, direct out of college, who have never had to compete in the ‘real’ business world.  The teachers are therefore ill-equipped to teach their charges the realities of the business world that many of them must encounter after their studies.

Teens Learn Through Games—Informatist Teaches Business through Online Gaming Tools.

How do teens learn these days?  Of course textbooks and lectures play an important role in the learning experience in high school.  But teens learn vicariously through online massive gaming in ways that are fund, involving, and eventually more engrossing than classroom lectures. The level of thinking required for high school students in real-time online games is simply on a different level than that they encounter in the classroom.

Modern games have moved from CD- and DVD-based on-computer software programs to massively online gaming engines which allow hundreds or even thousands of students to interact in novel ways.  Although many of their online gaming is in ’shoot-’em-ups’ or social networking games (such as The Sims), the students are nevertheless learning a good deal about their online environment, how to evaluate their situation (’sitrep’) and how to collaborate with others in order to analyze problems and come up with solutions.

Informatist—Learning Business Through Online Gaming.

The developers of Informatist (www.informatist.net), a massively online business simulation game, realized that new tools allow both interaction and flexibility, while imparting real-world lessons in how to solve business problems.  As with many online games targeted at entertainment, the Informatist website creates an environment where the student must analyze his or her resources, come up with strategies to create value, and compete against (or cooperate) with others in their online world to come up to solutions which best the competition.

The Sims took the world by storm when they came out in the late 1990’s.  Now business simulation technology is taking The Sims to the next step—learning real-world business lessons from massive online business simulation gaming.

For those who don’t know about the Sims, this was a game which simulated the complicated lives of individuals living in a small town.  As in real life, there were the roustabouts, the ne’er-do-wells, and the punks of the community.  There were also the straight-laced family people, kids, dogs and school marms.  Once the Sim community was set up, they would start to interact with one another. 

Originally, the Sims was an offline-only simulation.  You could choose your own persona to live in the virtual community, but the rest was generated by chance and the computer program.  Although clever, there was an air of two-dimensionality about the Sims which didn’t mirror real life.  Real people, after all, react to their environment in flexible and changing ways. 

One only had to try dating on the Sims in order to find the limits of the game.  None of the fun, the persiflage of real dating found its way to the computer game.  Responses were formulaic, not original or inspiring.

The advent of broadband internet access changed the Sims, and allowed people to interact online with one another.  People added an air of unpredictability—of humanity—to the Sims in a way that wasn’t possible in the offline simulation.

Business simulation is similar to the Sims—it requires a real interaction between people in order to feel real.  Real business is about interaction with people, just as it is in the online version of the Sims.  A new online business simulation, called the Informatist (www.informatist.net) brings hundreds and thousands of high school and college students online to try their hands and building and running businesses.  As in real life, they have competitors, suppliers, enemies and friends.  It’s this human element of the Informatist’s online simulation that makes the difference—just as it did when the Sims went online.

As with the Sims, players are invited to choose a persona and create a life for it.  Unlike the Sims, however, the businesses resemble real life.  One can choose to be a property owner, a pharmacist, an undertaker or even a ditch digger.  Once one makes his choice, one is faced with a number of decisions which can expand one’s wealth or make it contract.  Students learn from these simulations how life can be affected by the decisions they make—great preparation for real business life afterwards.

Simulations seem to be ubiquitous these days.  In World War II, crude “Lear Simulators” taught budding pilots how to fly before they had to go up in real planes.  By giving them some of the same instruments and movements as in a real plane, they were able to learn what to do—and more importantly what NOT to do—when they finally took to the air in a real plane.

Business is similar to flying: One must learn through realistic experiences.  Like the Lear Simulator pilots, those who learn through simulation are likely to make low-cost mistakes, but learn important lessons from them which apply to real-world issues later on.

A new business simulation, the Informatist (www.informatist.net) provides a ‘trainer’ simulation to high school and college students.  This massively participatory game takes many of the technologies used in online gaming and applies them to real-world business lessons.

A student is given an online name at (www.informatist.net) . , and starts in a fictional city.  Like in the real world, the student has little to start.  He or she is given a bit of money, a bit of land (in a poor suburb of town far from the best areas) and the opportunity to choose a profession.  As in real life, the student can choose to coast in life, not picking up skills and spending the money earned each day on beer and cigarettes (not really, but it sounds good!), eking out a living by digging ditches.  Or they can learn a business, such as undertaking or pharmacy, which gives the basis for strong growth in the future. 

Also as in the real world, the participant can invest in several businesses and grow a virtual empire.  Those who, like the ants, salt away their earnings and invest for the future, may end up passing the grasshoppers who leap ahead at first, but don’t make the investments in their skills that will prepare them for long-term success.

Can you crash and burn in a business simulation?  Yes, just as you can do so in a Lear Simulator. But in a business simulation, you’ll live to tell about your accident, and be able to relate the lessons learned to real business experiences in the future.

Business is not about being perfect.  It isn’t even about being right most of the time.  The key to business is to try a lot of things and make a lot of mistakes, but to learn from every mistake made and improve one’s performance over time.  The makers of a new online business simulation game, called the Informatist, realize that making mistakes in a business simulation is much less costly than making them in the real business world.  We learn from our mistakes—and the same learning can go on in the low-risk atmosphere of a business simulation as can go on in real life.

High school and college students don’t get much exposure to real business situations.  In most of the courses they take, they are taught that there is one perfect answer, and that the wrong answer will cost them on their grades.  In science, it’s important in high school to know ‘the facts,’ and understand that facts are immutable things which can only be right or wrong.

In business, the ‘facts’ change depending on the situation.  What was a fact yesterday may be irrelevant today, as competitors, the environmental conditions or market forces change how the ‘facts’ are perceived in the marketplace.  The ‘facts’ of business are difficult to discern.  What is a constant in business, however, are the instincts that good businesspeople learn through their experience.  And there is no experience that teaches more than making a mistake and learning how not to make it the next time.

Doctors have been using simulated patients for years now, which gives them a leg up when they have to encounter the same problems in real patients in the future.  They can learn the toughest procedures without dire consequences—the dummy may be realistic, but you can’t kill it.

Pilots learn in a like way on ’simulators,’ which use fast computers to simulate their flight environment.  In these simulators pilots can make serious mistakes which would result in crashes, injury or even death.  Pilots say that they are able to replicate situations so difficult that they are unlikely to encounter them in real life, but if they do, they are prepared because of the mistakes they learned from in the simulator.

Businesspeople need a simulator as well, in order to make mistakes in a low-risk environment and learn from them.  In the new business simulation online game, called the Informatist (www.informatist.net), high school and college students can create alternate personae that create businesses, invest in capital equipment, buy stocks and grow their businesses.  Students should not expect one ‘right’ answer; rather, they may make a lot of decisions that look bad in retrospect.  But, like physician and pilot simulations, they can make mistakes and learn from them.