High Stakes: Red Cohort Student Reflects on his experience competing for $75,000 in Simon's Second Annual Business Simulation Competition
Christopher Adams
$75,000 in free Simon tuition… I almost couldn’t imagine how it would feel to win such a sum of money. As I stood there, it was all I could do to focus on the moment rather than drift off into thoughts of what it would be like to win. It was an excellent time to remain focused, too… I was giving a ten minute presentation that, along with two interviews, would determine whether or not I would win such a grand prize. Public speaking rarely made me nervous. Prior to that moment, I had addressed entire lecture rooms of people, alone, for upwards of half an hour. And yet, though there were fewer than a dozen people in that room, they would have a greater impact on my future than any of my prior audiences. $75,000 was a lot to be riding on ten minutes with a panel of judges… it had better have been a good presentation.
I couldn’t help but wonder if some of my fellow contestants were thinking something similar that day of Friday, January 12. Each of us had made it to the final round of the second annual Simon Business Simulation Competition, and each of us was vying for one of several scholarships. Along with the full-ride, several partial scholarships were up for grabs. These included two 75% tuition scholarships, two 50% tuition scholarships, and two 25% tuition scholarships, or seven in total. Thirteen of us, from all around the world, had come to compete in the final round. Six of us, I reasoned, would leave with nothing. In the simulation’s first year, two of the presenters displayed such intelligence that two full-ride scholarships were awarded. Even with this in mind, the odds hung over my head.
Months prior, I had received a call from my grandfather about a notice he found in the Democrat and Chronicle describing the simulation. Having grown up on simulations like SimCity, Powerhouse, and Virtual Business, I figured I had a decent shot of winning and put up the $35 to join the contest… even if I was a 21 year-old local competing against business-savvy minds from around the globe (many with years of work experience).
The Simulation, Web Marketplace Business Simulator, pitted each of us original 75 contestants against three simulation-run companies in the PC manufacturing and retailing business. Over the course of eight decision periods, each lasting several days, we made business decisions based on output reports from the simulation. Once all players’ decisions were submitted, the simulation would process these and produce the next set of output for the next competition round. Early decisions were simplistic, like naming our companies and choosing which consumer segments to target. Later decisions became much more complicated, like deciphering consumer preferences based on market research data, and designing PCs based on these reports. One of my fellow contestants was an undergraduate classmate of mine, and we would regularly discuss strategy (though very cautiously, so as not to give away any of our secrets).
Of those 75 who competed in the first round, 25 had made it to round two after several weeks of competition. Among them were my friend and I. From here, contestants were divided into five marketplace worlds of five contestants each. In this round, we would compete against each other rather than against artificial intelligence-run companies. This time, our decisions would impact one other. If a competitor moved into another’s home market and dumped their product below cost to put the other out of business, it was personal. My friend and I had been placed in the same marketplace world, and became even more cautious around each other than we had been before.
Round 2 was also significantly more complicated. Rather than just 3 market segments to target, there were 5. There weren’t just 4 world regions in which to expand, there were 5 regions with 4 specific cities in each… 20 markets for which to make decisions! In addition, we would now be responsible for decisions ranging from manufacturing schedules to research and development projects to quality assurance programs. We could also cross-license technologies to each other via contracts over email. Certain ethical dilemmas even came into play, such as my friend and I avoiding using our relationship as a basis for collusion.
By the final week of Round 2, each decision period started to consume between six to eight hours of time. Because the simulator always processed everyone’s decisions at 2pm local time on the specified days, I would always open my email at 2:10pm with anticipation, hoping for the notice that the next round’s results were available for viewing. Had my decisions produced favorable results?
The risky nature of some of my decisions made some of them a gamble. Midway through Round 2, I realized that my lead in my marketplace world was deteriorating and I needed to do something drastic that none of my competitors was likely to do. I took a huge risk by taking out a large loan, dramatically increasing my plant capacity, and opening sales offices in all corners of the world. One can imagine my relief at the next round’s results, when my gamble paid off and my score shot up by over 400% (I should count myself lucky that no one was around to witness my personal victory dance). I had hoped that such a mammoth jump in score would catapult me into first place, but alas, it was not to be. While I was pleased to have placed fourth for the round, not placing first isn’t what surprised me. What surprised me was that the person who placed first actually had a score over four times greater than my own! How had he done it?!
Fortunately, Round 3’s evaluation was not weighted by Round 2’s scores. While the first two rounds of the competition had used the simulation to evaluate contestants’ ability to analyze information and make critical decisions, Round 3’s challenges would be different: We 15 top performers would come to Simon to present how we played the game… thus eloquence and finesse were the new criteria for victory. Indeed, 13 of us arrived on Friday, January 12 to convince the judges that each of us had our name on the grand prize. Included in this group of finalists were Meredith Graham, a fellow member of the Red Cohort, and Chris Tytler, my undergraduate friend. Of course, there could be only one grand prize winner. I wished my competitors good luck… (but not too much good luck).
Recounting my strategy of the past few months of play, I realized I had breezed through my 10-minute presentation in 8 minutes. I didn’t view it as a terrible thing- more time for questions and answers. Whether during the presentation or the two interviews that followed, a common theme of inquiry was to describe a problem that arose and how I solved it. My “preventative maintenance” to preserve my lead in Round 2 made for an excellent discussion point. How excellent a discussion point it was, I have yet to see… at the time I write this, I do not yet know the judges’ decisions about who will win what. Whatever the decisions, the experience will have been very rewarding. It is not every day that someone gets to go head to head with some of his most intelligent peers in a competition run by one of the most prestigious business schools in the world.
