Making decisions about expanding plants, handling international logistics, or taking out business loans is all in a typical day for DeSales MBA students. They may sound like CEOs, but in fact, these students are participating in the Business Strategy Game (BSG) , an international competition in which students are given a company to run. Decisions like those mentioned above, along with other critical business decisions, influence how well their simulated business does; and just like in the real world, their business can thrive or falter.
The Business Strategy Game is the central focus of the capstone course taken by every DeSales MBA student. It illustrates perfectly the real-world focus of the DeSales MBA degree, where emphasis is on practical skills, as they relate to learned theories and business principles.
"Each week I learned more and more about how to integrate all of the functional knowledge I had learned in the DeSales MBA program. I learned things like pricing elasticity, the benefits of a large market share, and total quality management with the labor force,” says recent graduate, Cindy Mitman. “Production, distribution, marketing, finance, accounting, and operations pieces all came together to run a successful business.”
And successful she was. After beating out her classmates at DeSales, Cindy was invited to participate in the Business Strategy Invitational (BSI) with students from around the globe in 216 teams representing 18 industries.
Participating in the Business Strategy Invitational was certainly a roller coaster ride,” she said. “The most challenging part about the Invitational was the fact that it spans 10 years in 2 weeks — forcing you to make quick decisions each night. For the Business Strategy Game in class, I had the luxury of reviewing reports and testing scenarios over a week between each year [in the game] versus one night.”
Those quick decisions paid off. In the end, she placed third in her industry worldwide – quite a feat!
Cindy credits much of her success to the teaching and mentoring style of her capstone instructor, Ed Luttenberg, and the way in which the Capstone experience calls for practical decision making in a simulated environment. “I truly enjoyed each time I played the BSG/BSI and learned that different strategies can be successful when they are executed well,” she says.
DeSales MBA is proud of Cindy and her accomplishments and is looking for ways to make the Capstone class even more relevant. Kudos to Cindy and Ed Luttenberg for jobs well done!