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1 C OURSE A CTIVITIES
The activities in this course will be divided between team and individual assignments.
Type Assignment Points Percent of Grade Team Strategy Selection 5 points 5% Team Business Simulation 30 points 30% Team Company Scenarios 5 points (x3) 15% Team Board Report 8 points 8% Individual Knowledge Checks (top 5 out of 7) 2 points (x5) 10% Individual CompXM 20 points 20% Individual Discussion 10 points 10% Individual Course Reflection 2 points 2%
1.1 T EAM ACTIVITIES
1.1.1 Strategy Selection At the beginning of the simulation, your team faces an unusual business situation – all companies and products are identical to each other. In the real world this situation rarely if ever occurs. The closest analog might be a highly regulated industry.
Looking into the future, the simulated industry will rapidly differentiate. Nothing you can do will stop it. Given time, the industry will evolve into a state where competitors occupy defendable strategic positions. There are two important questions. “How long will the process take?” “Will two or more competitors attempt to occupy the same position?”
Let’s use an analogy. Picture a flat landscape. Now imagine several hills placed on the landscape. Each of the hills represents a strategy. Your success depends upon how quickly you can identify a hill, and how high you can climb it. Your hope is that you will choose a hill that nobody else picks, and that you can defend it against competitors. Complicating this is the fact that some hills are more attractive than others. Further, the more companies trying to climb a particular hill, the more difficult it is for each of them to successfully climb it.
Are there methods and techniques that will help you identify and select these strategic hills? Yes, the general topic is widely discussed. Let’s look at one of the most commonly referenced, Michael Porter’s “Generic Strategies”. Read the description on Capsim’s blog (http://www.capsim.com/blog/an- introduction-to-porters-generic-strategies/).
Next, review the Student Guide, "6 Basic Strategies."
With this as background, select or develop a strategy you would like your team to pursue. Prepare and submit an argument for your strategy. The argument should address these issues:
- Segments. Which segments matter to you? How much share of those segments must you achieve to be an “average competitor” in the overall industry? For example, if you choose to
play only in Traditional and Low End, you would have to command a higher share of those segments to achieve “average industry sales”.
- Profit potential.
- The speed at which you can create a defendable position. For example, new products typically take two years to bring to market. Significant productivity improvements could take several years.
- Priorities. Which products are most important to you? Which are least important?
- Goals and priorities for each of the functional areas (R&D, marketing, production, and finance).
- How your team plans to communicate and make decisions in the simulation.
1.1.2 Business Simulation To provide you with an experiential activity that will allow you to apply theories of strategic management, you will complete six (6) rounds of Capstone, a business simulation from Capsim, as a member of a team. The simulation will require you to make decisions in multiple departments (Research and Development, Marketing, Production, and Finance). In order to help you with cross-departmental decision-making, your team is encouraged to discuss all decisions for all departments, rather than having individual team members claiming sole responsibility for a particular department. This will assist you later in the course when you complete an individual exam that includes making decisions in all departments. You will be scored in both short- (round-by-round) and long-term (balanced scorecard) performance.
1.1.3 Beyond the Numbers Company Scenarios Associated with the simulation will be a selection of Beyond the Numbers scenarios that you will address. These will require you to pull information from the Capstone Courier and/or extrapolate beyond the simulation to make decisions related to operating your company. You will complete three (3) of the scenarios as a team.
1.1.4 Board Report The Board Report will answer specific questions to your board on your operation of your company. The report will include two separate files, a written executive summary, and a presentation file to be delivered to your company advisory board. Your report and presentation should address the following issues:
- Provide context with a brief overview of the company history (Round 0 – 6)
- Describe your company strategy and how it was implemented.
- Company performance. How has the performance fluctuated over the life of the company? Use data from your Courier reports to back up your claims. Be sure to address all departments.
- Which rival companies are your strongest competitors? In what ways? Why?
- Future direction. Based on current and past decisions, what would you recommend the company do next?
While the executive summary itself is important and should be well-written, your presentation file will hold more weight since it would potentially have more influence on members of the board. The summary should support the graphical representations in the presentation file. You will not have time in this course to actually make the presentation. Both your executive summary and presentation file must follow the assignment rubrics for evaluation.
- What did your team learn about strategy overall (include theoretical, applied, practical integrations)?
- What did your team learn about strategy from the simulation that you did not learn in the rest of the course materials?
- Which elements of your team and individual decision making do you wish you could have improved? Of which elements of your team and individual decision making are you most proud?
- What did you as an individual learn most about yourself as a decision-maker?
- What did you as a team do really well, and what could you work on given another chance to work together?
- How well did your team understand and anticipate the external environment?
- What did you learn about the role of financial resources in decision making?
