How The Business Strategy Game Works — A Quick Overview

There are three exceptionally important teaching/learning benefits associated with using a competition-based simulation like The Business Strategy Game:

1. Having class members run a company in head-to-head competition against companies managed by other class members provides a truly powerful learning experience that thrusts class members squarely into an active, hands-on managerial role. The co-managers of each company are totally responsible for assessing market conditions, determining how to respond to the actions of competitors, forging a long-term direction and strategy for their company, forecasting upcoming sales volumes, and making decisions relating to workforce compensation and plant operations, capacity expansion, distribution center operations and inventory management, pricing and marketing, finance, and corporate social responsibility/citizenship.

   Because company co-managers are held fully accountable for their decisions and their company's performance, they are strongly motivated to dig deeply into company operations, probe for ways to be more cost-efficient and competitive, and ferret out strategic moves and decisions calculated to boost company performance. It doesn't take long for company co-managers to become emotionally invested in figuring out what strategic moves to make to out-compete rivals. Such diligent and purposeful actions on the part of company co-managers translate into an engaging learning experience with strong retention of the lessons learned and higher achievement of course learning objectives.

   To provide you with quantitative evidence of the boost in learning power and achievement of course objectives that occurs with using The Business Strategy Game, there is a built-in Learning Assurance Report showing how well each class member performs on 9 skills/learning measures versus tens of thousands of students at some 600+ campuses worldwide that used The Business Strategy Game in the past 12 months.

2. The competitive nature of a strategy simulation arouses positive energy and steps up the whole tempo of the course by a notch or two. The healthy rivalry that emerges among the management teams of competing companies stirs competitive juices and spurs class members to fully exercise their strategic wits, analytical skills, and decision-making prowess—much more so than occurs with many other types of assignments.

   Nothing energizes a class quicker or better than concerted efforts on the part of class members to gain a high industry ranking and avoid the perilous consequences of getting outcompeted by class members running rival companies. It is hard to duplicate the excitement and hallway chatter that occurs when the results of the latest decision round become available and co-managers renew their quest for strategic moves and actions that will strengthen company performance.

   Participating in a competition-based strategy simulation is an unusually stimulating and enjoyable way for class members to learn. As soon as your students start to say “Wow! Not only is this fun but I am learning a lot”, which they will, you have moved the value of taking your course to a much higher plateau in the business school curriculum. This translates into a livelier, richer learning experience from a student perspective and better instructor-course evaluations.

3. The automated nature of The Business Strategy Game reduces the time instructors spend on course preparation, course administration, and grading. Not only are administrative requirements for using BSG quite modest, but since the simulation also involves a 20 to 30-hour workload for student-teams (roughly 2 hours per decision round times 10-12 rounds, plus optional BSG-related assignments), adopters often compensate by trimming the volume of other course assignments (often those that entail considerable preparation and/or grading on the instructor’s part). Grading for The Business Strategy Game is effortless and takes only minutes. Once you enter percentage grading weights for each BSG activity in your online grade book, an overall numerical grade is automatically calculated for each class member.

   Course preparation time is further cut because you can use several class days to have class members meet in the computer lab to work on upcoming decision rounds or a 3-year strategic plan (in lieu of lecturing on a chapter or covering an additional assigned case). Lab sessions provide a splendid opportunity for you to visit with teams, observe the interplay among co-managers, and view the caliber of the learning experience that is going on.

   The speed and ease with which you can conduct a fully-automated strategy simulation for your course frees time for other activities. Plus, every task can be performed from an office or home computer or device that has an Internet connection and an Internet browser.

One Learning Assurance Report provides you with solid empirical data regarding the business skills and decision-making capabilities of the students in your class relative to students at other business schools across the world. The report provides you with credible evidence about the business proficiencies of your students on each of 9 measures that are precisely defined at the bottom of the report. The three measures relating to "Leadership Skills", "Collaboration & Teamwork", and "Analytical Skills" are based on each student's individual performance as viewed by their company co-managers and their performance on Quiz 2; the other 5 measures are all based on data relating to the performance of the group of co-managers comprising each company in the simulation. The percentiles shown in the report are based on the total population of students worldwide playing The Business Strategy Game over the past twelve months.

The Performance Benchmarks Report (PBR) provides comparative data on the performance by your single course to other classes that have completed the The Business Strategy Game simulation exercise within the last 12 months. With the PBR you can easily evaluate the performance of your class versus others as it relates to the following 6 measures:

1. Overall Score
2. Earnings Per Share
3. Return On Equity
4. Stock Price
5. Credit Rating
6. Image Rating

The Business Strategy Game offers exceptional value as a robust educational tool due to its unique real-time competitive learning environment. Generative AI is largely ineffective. Each BSG simulation creates a distinct competitive landscape shaped by the decisions of student-run companies. AI-generated strategies are will not succeed because they are unresponsive to the context-specific Industry Reports for each class. Assessments conducted within The Business Strategy Game assign a grade to students who engage in critical analysis, adaptive learning and learning outcomes in corporate strategy.

We provide instructors with the Best Practices for using The Business Strategy Game with Generative AI. This includes: (I) open-ended questions that test context-specific knowledge of The Business Strategy game; (ii) generative AI to enhance critical thinking; (iii) contrasting ethical perspectives in corporate citizenship in BSG decision entries; (iv) employing a mix of course assessments; (v) considering secured assessments (vi) using the BSG peer evaluations to award students on responsible AI; and, (vii) proactive communication on academic dishonesty. By incorporating these best practices, educators can maintain assessment integrity and build on the dynamic advantage of The Business Strategy Game with generative AI.

Over the last 12 months, The Business Strategy Game has been used by nearly 50,000 students in over 2,600 classes/sections at 500+ college/university campus locations in 52 different countries.

The Business Strategy Game is eminently suitable for those international business courses at the senior/MBA levels where the instructor wants to put strong emphasis on "global strategic management." Incorporating The Business Strategy Game can enrich an international business course from several angles:

• It mirrors the increasingly global nature of today’s competitive markets.
• There are four distinct geographic market segments — Europe-Africa, North America, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America. The four regional markets plus the three product segments (branded internet, branded wholesale, and private-label) create a virtual market-space with 12 market segments.
• Companies start the simulation on equal global and financial footing where rival companies find themselves in the midst of an ongoing contest for global market leadership. The contest is not just one of market leadership worldwide but one where companies contend for leadership in one or more of the 12 market segments. This contest gives students powerful insight into the dynamics and nuances of a globally competitive marketplace.
• Furthermore, the structural feature of The Business Strategy Game marketplace setting makes BSG "country and region neutral" so that students in Europe or Latin America or Hong Kong or Australia or South Africa do not see themselves as playing a United States simulation or managing a U.S.-based company. BSG is just as appropriate for use in international business courses taught in Switzerland or Great Britain or Mexico or Singapore or South Africa or Australia or Brazil as in the United States.
• The Business Strategy Game incorporates the use of import duties (which can be raised or lowered between any or all geographic regions).
• The Business Strategy Game puts fluctuating exchange rates into play. The revenues a company receives from footwear shipments to Europe-Africa are tied to real-world fluctuations between the euro and the U.S. dollar. BSG automatically captures the pertinent changes in exchange rates from one decision to the next and presents the sizes of the latest upward/downward adjustments on the relevant decision screens for company managers to utilize in their decision-making. Thus, students will experience first-hand the business risks and impacts of exchange rate fluctuations.
• The Business Strategy Game provides you with a "live case" that you can use in your lectures to illustrate the application of key concepts in international business.
• The Business Strategy Game can serve as a full or partial substitute for the use of cases on international business cases.

We think you will discover that The Business Strategy Game will inject enormous energy and emotional involvement into an international business course from a student standpoint. Plus, it will provide a pedagogically effective way to connect the material in the textbook to the strategy-related problems of managing cross-border business activities in the real world.

The 45-minute session conducted by one of the simulation co-authors will entail a live tour of the BSG simulation from a student and instructor perspective. Questions from attendees are encouraged and answered completely with supporting live site demos.

Attendance is free of charge and open to all new and current instructors:

Upcoming Webinars

Creating an account is welcomed and entails no obligation.

Establishing an account entitles you to browse the site in the capacity of an instructor or "simulation administrator", preview whether The Business Strategy Game is suitable for use in your course (or company training program), and enables you to launch use of BSG in a course or training program for which you are the official instructor or facilitator or other duly authorized assistant. McGraw-Hill will verify your credentials and, in some cases, it is possible that a McGraw-Hill representative will contact you by phone or e-mail soon to confirm your status.

User Agreement

Should I adopt The Business Strategy Game for use in my course, I agree to require every student enrolled in my course to register a student account at the BSG Web site (www.bsg-online.com) and I agree to encourage student respect for the intellectual property and copyrights of the authors and the publisher, McGraw-Hill.

I understand that BSG will inform me via e-mail when there are important system changes, program updates, or special events that impact the use of The Business Strategy Game in courses that I am teaching.