Trainers Start-up - Business Simulation

Overview of Simulation

In the Trainers Start-up simulation, teams of students manage a start-up company trading in sports shoes. Here, they need to conduct analyses and hone their entrepreneurial skills to design and launch their company's growth strategy. Competing in a series of rounds, students then need to monitor company performance against their strategy's KPIs and overall objectives, make strategic decisions and respond to external events to improve their company's performance and earn points on the simulation's ‘Balanced Scorecard’.

The Trainers Simulation has now been completely redesigned from the ground up. Every section has a new, modern, clean look with a more intuitive design and user experience.

Pedagogically, the simulation is as strong as it has always been, but with these new updates, it fits well with modern programmes wanting to provide the best and most engaging learning experiences for their students.

Some specific updates to the content:

• Styling of product lines
• Marketing engine completely rebuilt
• Accessibility standards updated (WCAG)
• LMS and VLE integration
  

Developing A Winning Strategy

Once students have assigned their roles, it's time to design their growth strategy. Based on their internal and external analysis, students need to determine their product's competitive focus: cost leadership, product leadership, customer intimacy, or a combination of all three.

Students also need to set their own SMART objectives and KPIs, deciding where to invest within the business to ensure these are on track and eventually met or exceeded. Within this, they need to decide how risky their objectives are. The level of risk applied to their objectives (and whether they're met or not) are key factors in earning points on the 'Balanced Scorecard' during each round of the simulation.

A Modern Marketing Mix

The marketing side of the simulation has also been completely rebuilt, with a greater focus on the wide range of digital marketing channels now available to today’s marketing managers.

AI Assistant 

The Trainers Simulation now features an AI assistant, which allows you to meaningfully embed AI into your course while allowing students to use AI in a safe and controlled way.

With the new AI assistant, students can hone their AI prompting skills to analyse the decisions, results, and financial and market data specifically relating to the unique data sets of their own virtual company.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Students create an effective business strategy designed to increase sales and company growth.
• Students gain a greater understanding of the opportunities and challenges available in managing a B2C start-up company.
• Students learn more about the impact of external events on their company's performance.
• Students develop entrepreneurial, team-working, analytical, and leadership skills.
• Students learn to interpret business data critically, including with the support of an AI assistant.

ASSESSMENT ideas and examples

The Start-up simulation is usually assessed in several ways. Below you will find the most popular options:

• Submit a business plan for the next financial year based on their company's overall performance in the simulation.
• Written group report in which the teams record each round what decisions they have taken and what they think the outcomes will be. They reflect on the decisions made in each new round and continue doing this throughout the business simulation.
• 360 peer assessment in which students have to allocate a hundred points among their fellow teammates based on their contribution.
• Organise a “Dragon’s Den” elevator pitch, a presentation to ‘investors’, played by the other student teams or lecturers.
• The stock exchange could become part of the assessment. Their share price or ranking position can be translated into 25% of their final mark on the module.