Business simulation

Business simulation or corporate simulation is simulation used for business training, education or analysis. It can be scenario-based or numeric-based. Most business simulations are used for business acumen training and development. Learning objectives include: strategic thinking, decision making, problem solving, financial analysis, market analysis, operations, teamwork and leadership. The business gaming community seems lately to have adopted the term business simulation game instead of just gaming or just simulation. The word simulation is sometimes considered too mechanistic for educational purposes. Simulation also refers to activities where an optimum for some problem is searched for, while this is not usually the aim of an educational game. On the other hand, the word game can imply time wasting, not taking things too seriously and engaging in an exercise designed purely for fun. The concept of simulation gaming seems to offer the right combination and balance between the two. Simulation gaming is also the term that the educational gaming community has adopted. Partly, the terminology of business simulation games is not well established. The most common term used is business game but several other terms are also in use. Here we will define the most common terms used in context of (computer-based) business learning environments. Klabbers (1999) notes that gaming is sometimes associated with something that is frivolous, just for the fun of it. This hampers its scientific endeavor and the more serious connotations of gaming in the scientific arena. The term game is used to describe activities in which some or all of these characteristics are prominent: human, humanly controlled, opponents, whose actions have an effect upon each other and upon the environment, an emphasis on competitiveness and winning, an emphasis on pleasure, humour and enjoyment, a repetitive cycle of making decisions and encountering a result, allowing the hope of improvement and 'doing better next time'.