InformatistBusinessSimulationGame

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.

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