InformatistBusinessSimulationGame

“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.

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