Learning Business from Games: Inventory Management, and Competing on Price and Quality

A post on learning business from games in class at my new website.

Snippet:
Today we played another game in the class I am assisting with. We have played games in the past. The first one we played was a "fair" bargaining game which was rather successful. The second was a cost estimation (plus negotiation) game which, in contrast, failed horribly due to my underestimation of the required background for the successful conduct of the game (linear regression was required), so in giving a crash course on applying linear regression and helping the students, we ran out of time. Today's game, though very hastily put together, I'd rate as successful and pedagogically meaningful. The game's broad objectives are to expose students to the strategic considerations when there is a coupling of investment, price competition, quality competition and inventory management. That is quite a number of dynamics at work in a game that you will find is really very simple. In what follows, I will describe the game and also provide a copy of the game's Excel spreadsheet (for recording the proceedings and doing the requisite accounting).