2019 marks the 20th Anniversary of using MikesBikes Advanced at the University of Auckland. The “MikesBikes Reunion” took place on the 25th of March to enable alumni to reconnect with their fellow team members and simulation users.
MikesBikes Advanced is used at an undergraduate level in Management in Dynamic Contexts taught by Peter Smith and Andrew Patterson. As well as at a masters level in Managing People in Organisations taught by Darl Kolb.
The evening started with a few words from Peter Smith, Darl Kolb and Smartsims CEO, Dennis Gain.
“It was great to catch up with so many former students and hear about their achievements since leaving University. We were also lucky enough to have representatives from Smartsims (the makers of MikesBikes), come along and support the event (many of whom are also alumni too).”
One of two previous Masters student, David Thomas, who wrote their Thesis using MikesBikes data, were present at the reunion. The other was Emma Dawson, who is now based in California.
The rest of the evening was spent reminiscing about the fun times, mishaps (where best lessons come from!) and experiences from MikesBikes.
“Students come back to us and talked about how they’ve gone into an interview in the big four accounting firms. They haven’t had any other experience in other organizations, but they can say with pride and confidence that they’ve actually worked in a team that had real work to do. It’s always heartening because it does actually simulate a professional work team. I’ve also had people at a personal level realize that the simulation gives them a chance to think about their own personal direction, who they are and who they want to be. It’s quite rewarding and fulfilling as professor.”
We are only now really appreciating how powerful the use of MikesBikes has been. Darl and I were struck by the warm feelings the alumni had for MikesBikes and the value they saw in its use. For example, I had a really nice email from one student (who now works overseas and couldn’t attend) explaining how useful he had found the lesson learnt through MikesBikes when he worked in Software Development, and how much its shapes what he does now that he is a university lecturer.
We would like to thank Peter Smith, Darl Kolb and Andrew Patterson for their continued support for the past 20 years. We’re looking forward to many more years of working together!
It is the average Price / Awareness / PR / Distribution / Quality index weighted by the volume of demand for each product.
We use a weighted average to give a better indication of the overall level of value for consumers.
For instance, if you have two products A and B with A priced at $100 and B at $50, then the average price of those two products is $75, ie. ($100 + $50) / 2 = $75).
But for the weighted average we look at the amount of demand for each product.
If A had 100 units of demand and B had ten times as much demand (1,000 units) then the weighted average price would then be:
(100 * $100 per unit + 1000 * $50 per unit) / 1100 units = $54.55
What are the other common mistakes in Music2Go Marketing?
In Part Two, we’ll talk about the importance of reaching the right customers and how to better allocate your Sales Promotion Mix.
Here’s Part One of the article in case you missed it.
Mistake #4: Misunderstanding the Importance of Reaching the Right Customers
Not understanding this can be a costly mistake as it often leads to incorrectly assigning your Advertising Mix. This can have a negative impact on the demand for your products and can also lead to overspending. Meaning your firm’s profitability is at risk!
How do you know if you are spending your advertising budget inefficiently? Follow through this section, it will show you how to efficiently allocate your advertising budget.
Each market segment is sensitive to different dimensions. View the Market Information report.
How do I interpret this Product Dimension Sensitivities graph?
The best way to explain it is through an example. If you take the Standard segment, you’ll see it has a high sensitivity to Price. This means that an increase to your price (example setting the price to the maximum) is going to have a negative effect on your sales volume.
What these sensitivities mean is a change in any of these factors, will result in a proportionate change in the consumers’ demand for your product(s).
There are four media choices to develop your advertising mix on: Television, Newspapers, Magazines and Digital Media.
There are two substantial sources of information you can use to determine your optimal advertising mix for a given advertising spend: Advertising and PR Reach by Media Curve and Media Viewing Habits. Both information can be found in the Market Information report.
The best way to explain this would be to provide an example.
Example: Budget of $4 million on Standard Segment.
Option 1: 42% of the Standard Segment read magazines.
So our $4 million spend would reach approximately 90% (taken from the graph at a spend of $4 million) x 42% (Media Viewing Habits) = 37.8% of the Standard segment can be reached
Option 2: 85% of the Standard Segment can be reached via Digital Media.
So our $4 million spend would reach approximately 50% (taken from the graph at a spend of $4 million) * 85% (Media Viewing Habits) = 42.5% of the Standard segment
Option 3: But maybe we can do better than that still. What happens if we spend $2 million on Newspapers, and $2 million on Magazines?
If we spend $2 million on Newspapers, we could reach approximately 40% of Newspaper viewers and 58% of the Standard segment reads Newspapers. So we could reach approximately 40% (Media Viewing Habits) x 58% (taken from the graph at a spend of $2 million) = 23.2% of the Standard Segment.
If we spend $2 million on Magazines we could reach approximately 50% of Magazine viewers and 42% of the Standard segment reads Magazines. So we could reach approximately 50% (Media Viewing Habits) x 42% (taken from the graph at a spend of $2 million) = 21% of the Standard segment.
So, together our $4 million spent half on Newspapers and half on Magazines would reach approximately 44.2% of the Standard segment, which is obviously a better use of our Advertising budget than the first two options.
As you can see, with the same budget, but a different allocation towards each media channel can make a huge difference in the amount of consumers you can reach.
This is only an example of good and bad marketing mixes. This is far from the best mix you can make. We suggest playing around on different Marketing Mix and see what works best for your strategy and budget.
Mistake# 5: Inaccurately Allocating Your Sales Promotion Mix
Your Sales Promotion strategy will need to vary with the Life Cycle of your product. For instance, Trade Shows and Sales Force training will be important a new product launch, bur progressively less so as the product ages. Your existing product will be in the Mature phase of its life cycle for your first Sales Promotion decision (Sales Promotion decisions are available after the 1st rollover).
It is important that you get your Sales Promotion Mix right, because it helps boost your distribution coverage and distribution index. In addition, some segments are particularly sensitive to Distribution, such as the Standard Segment.
There are 6 types of Sales Promotion activities available to you to promote your products and support your distributors:
Trade Shows
Salesforce Training
Premiums (Gifts)
Website/Social Media
Point of Purchase Displays
Rebates
So, how do I choose a Sales Promotion Mix for my products?
Remember that each of your products will progress through the Product Life Cycle starting in the Growth phase for new products and then gradually progressing through to the Decline stage over the next six rollovers.
Say we launch a new Youth product this period. This new product will start in the Growth phase of the Product Life Cycle (See Market Information Report > Sales Promotion). Then from looking at the tables above, we can see that our Ideal Sales Promotion Mix for a new Sports product is:
Trade Shows – 15%
Sales Force Training – 25%
Premium (Gifts) – 5%
Website and Social Media – 25%
Point of Purchase Displays – 25%
Rebates – 5%
Total = 100%
That was a simple example, but what happens in the second year that we sell this Youth product? The product will be moved from the “Growth” phase to “Growth – Starting to Mature.” So the optimal Sales Promotion mix will be 1/3 of the way between the ideal Growth and Mature figures in the Sales Promotion Table. That would give us an optimal Sales Promotion mix something like:
You should buy the Distribution Coverage and Sales Promotion Market Research report for detailed information on the Sales Promotion Rating and Stage of Product Life Cycle for all firms in the Industry.
“During a research experiment a marine biologist placed a shark into a large holding tank and then released several small bait fish into the tank.
As you would expect, the shark quickly swam around the tank, attacked and ate the smaller fish. The marine biologist then inserted a strong piece of clear fiberglass into the tank, creating two separate partitions. She then put the shark on one side of the fiberglass and a new set of bait fish on the other.
Again, the shark quickly attacked. This time, however, the shark slammed into the fiberglass divider and bounced off. Undeterred, the shark kept repeating this behavior every few minutes to no avail. Meanwhile, the bait fish swam around unharmed in the second partition. Eventually, about an hour into the experiment, the shark gave up.
This experiment was repeated several dozen times over the next few weeks. Each time, the shark got less aggressive and made fewer attempts to attack the bait fish, until eventually the shark got tired of hitting the fiberglass divider and simply stopped attacking altogether.
The marine biologist then removed the fiberglass divider, but the shark didn’t attack. The shark was trained to believe a barrier existed between it and the bait fish, so the bait fish swam wherever they wished, free from harm.”
What do you think is the moral lesson of this story?
The lesson here is many of us give up after experiencing failures. Like the shark story, we believe that if we were unsuccessful in the past, then we will always be unsuccessful. We continue to see barrier in our heads, even when there are no “real” barriers.
So you are probably reading this article because you want to get out of a situation where you have made mistakes in the simulation and want to fix it, right? Good on you for crossing that barrier!
Mistake #1: Not purchasing Market Research Reports
We cannot reiterate enough how important this is. Many students want to “save” their budget and invest it in other areas in the simulation. However, knowledge is power and by investing in these paid reports, you are making more informed decisions.
Mistake #2: Having leftover Marketing Budget
Your budget does not carryover to the next year, so it is important that you spend the entire Marketing Budget that you have been given for the current year.
Mistake #3: Misunderstanding the Importance of Pricing Products Correctly
Price is usually a key determinant of demand and is the most critical component to maximizing your revenue. Therefore, carefully thinking about your Pricing strategy is important as this would have an impact on the demand for your products.
The article below is written by one of our previous students, Michael Stewart from Boston University. Michael took the Managing a Growing Enterprise course with Professor Greg Stoller and used MikesBikes Advanced as part of this.
Upon completion, he had the idea to incorporate MikesBikes Advanced into their program for this semester’s pledge class in their business fraternity, Delta Sigma Pi. The purpose of their fraternity is to foster the study of business in universities and to promote the association of students studying business for their mutual advancement through research and practice.
Michael is in charge of instructing the pledge (underclassmen students at Boston University) as they seek brotherhood within the fraternity. He felt that the simulation would be academically enriching and will create some level of competitiveness and enjoyment.
MikesBikes Advanced Experience in the Managing a Growing Enterprise course
This past fall, I was introduced to MikesBikes Advanced in my Managing a Growing Enterprise course at Boston University. This class was for students interested in pursuing Entrepreneurship and much of the lesson plan was focused on how to strategically position a new company in a competitive market.
Our Professor, Gregory Stoller, used the simulation to further our understanding of class material, as well as a tool to keep students engaged outside of the classroom.
MikesBikes Advanced is an online business simulation that offers students the opportunity to run their own company, while managing all the key functional areas of a business. It is an interactive tool that applies the basic concepts of business in a real-life context. Through the simulation, we received hands on experience making marketing, operations, product development and financial decisions.
After introducing the simulation to us and dividing us into teams, Professor Stoller assigned us our first deliverable; the Strategic Plan.
Our Strategic Plan set the guidelines of our businesses and assisted teams as they set variables for the first few weeks of the simulation.
The plan outlined our company’s mission, corporate and functional strategy and the key metrics that would be utilized to measure our company’s performance. The plan allowed for teams to show how they were going to position their companies relative to others in the virtual industry and how they were going to structure their spending in each functional area to achieve this position.
My classmates and I understand how much work would be involved in this assignment and found ourselves working on plans late into the night and often overnight into the morning they were due. This shows the complexity of the simulation and all the variables that you must stay apprised of over the course of the weekly rollovers. Once the first rollover hit, we still found that we failed to account for many of the variables that play into the shareholder value, which happened to be the most important metric in MikesBikes.
As the weeks passed, we saw the virtual market begins to take shape as teams began to adapt their strategies. Some teams chose to launch products into all possible market segments, whereas others held tight within only a few segments. By the end of the simulation, the teams that diversified their product found the most success. With only a few weeks left, teams who were behind did not have the time needed to launch new products and replicated the success of others. The lagging teams resorted to paying dividends and manipulating other financial variables in order to inflate their shareholder values in the final hour.
At the very end of the semester, each of the teams presented their performance and the lessons they learned from their experience in the simulation. Each team spent time discussing some of the mistakes they made early in the simulation and how they could have operated differently. The improper use of cash was a factor that impacted all the teams. Almost all the teams sat on heavy cash balances and did not use resources to reinvest back in their operations. It was not until the end of the simulation that we all began to pay dividends, buy back equity and pay off debt.
The simulation gave the class a more competitive feel than other business classes. Every Wednesday night my classmates and I would stay up to see who was on top after the weekly rollover. We spent hours trying to find the best ways to position our respective companies, may it be targeting a different segment or possibly improving product quality. We knew that if we found ourselves at the bottom of the rankings on Thursday morning, we would be subjected to some friendly banter among others in the class. As a rather small class, a shared bond developed within the group. It also helped that most of us had pre-existing relationships from our shared brotherhood in the business fraternity, Delta Sigma Pi.
Delta Sigma Pi (DSP)
From left to right: Max Reich, Gabor Imre, Hiro Nango, Eric Zhu and Michael Stewart (Brothers of DSP)
Our fraternity, Delta Sigma Pi, or more fondly known as “DSP”, was organized in 1907 to bring students of commerce together, develop their skills and prepare them for the world of business.
Since its origin, DSP has attracted thousands of students to join its organization by emphasizing its four pillars: Brotherhood, Service, Professionalism and Scholarship. Along with a sense of identity, these pillars help guide DSP chapters across the country as they help mold young men and women into business leaders of tomorrow.
The shared brotherhood is also why we all found ourselves together in Professor Stoller’s class. The five of us all have interest in entrepreneurship, a few having some prior experience running their own companies. We were all driven by our shared desire to practice our business skills in an academic environment. Once a few of us signed up for Managing a Growing Enterprise, we quickly influenced others in the fraternity to join as well. I believe that this factor was what led to the simulation feeling so competitive – the fact that we wanted to have higher shareholder value than our brothers on the opposing teams.
Taking the class also opened our eyes to something that could be done to better our fraternity. Our chapter does not offer many outlets for our brothers to practice their business skills, work together in teams and compete against one another. We have been actively searching for different ways to accomplish this in the Spring 2019 semester. It is for this reason that we have decided to partner with Smartsims in order to share the MikesBikes simulation with our pledge class this spring.
After being introduced to MikesBikes this past semester, it became obvious to us that this could be a great tool to be added to our semester-long pledge program. Each semester, our new pledge class could take part in the simulation and practice their skills as they compete against one another. The simulation will provide the pledge class with an opportunity to better understand the functional elements that go into running a company.
MikesBikes Advanced at Delta Sigma Pi
Our plan is to run the simulation very similar to how it was conducted in Professor Stoller’s class. Of course, there will need to be many resources available to the pledge class as they will be less familiar with the functional areas of running a business as they are only underclassmen who have not taken some of the pre-requisite classes yet. We will address this concern by assigning advisers to each team and providing a two-week “ramp up” period before the first rollover.
Each team will work with the advisers to create Strategic Plans that will outline both their corporate and functional strategies. These plans will guide their decision making once the first rollover takes place. Advisers will continue working with teams throughout the semester and help guide them as they set variables that fit related to the simulation. The advisers will also help to further their understanding of topics such as trade-offs, competitive positioning, and other business-related activities. Since these topics are relative to almost every sector of the business world, these students will gain much value from taking part in this experience even if they have no aspiration towards running their own company.
The final deliverable will be a team presentation during which the pledges will talk about the lessons they learned and critical decisions that had the most impact on their performance. We hope this will be a reflective exercise that will also allow the pledges to practice speaking in business settings.
The winning team will be decided by both this presentation and simulation performance. The presentation will also be a tool for Administrators to review how to better implement the simulation in the future with pledges who have no prior entrepreneurial experiences.
As a fraternity, we are looking forward to seeing how we can further experiment with the MikesBikes Advanced simulation. We are certain that it will provide academic value to the pledge class. However, we are realistic in that we expect there to be some kinks given that this is our fist attempt implementing the simulation. We feel fortunate to have the opportunity to share this experience with the pledge class and hope it ignites an interest in Entrepreneurship.
Michael is currently running the MikesBikes Advanced simulation until April, so stay tuned for the next article featuring their pledges experience with the simulation!
Meet Peter Johnson, an Intro to Business student from Des Moines Area Community College. He managed to land the Top 7 spot in the MikesBikes Introduction Hall of Fame last Fall.
We interviewed Peter to learn about his decision-making, strategy and what resources he used to help him succeed in the simulation.
What is your decision-making process in the simulation?
My decision-making process always began with reading the business reports to base my decisions off of. When looking over the reports, I would also take notice of what my competition was doing. Analyzing this information was very helpful in every new decision I made especially when expanding my product line. I would then adjust my numbers for production and available units for sale. Next, I would tend to my advertising in each market. I spent quite a bit of money on advertising, but it worked well for me. In addition, I invested in many company and product improvements such as efficiency and quality. When able, I would pay dividends and repurchase equity as well. For the most part, this decision-making process remained routine for me through each simulation rollover.
What was your strategy going into the simulation?
My strategy for the simulation was to increase shareholder value by boosting sales and maximizing profits. To do so, I wanted to grow my company by expanding the product line and by investing more money in advertising to grow my brand and gain a competitive edge. I knew I wanted to separate myself from the competition and an increase in advertising was my first step in accomplishing that.
How did you begin implementing that strategy?
I implemented that strategy by immediately increasing the money I spent on advertising. I paid attention to the market reports to allocate my advertising expenses effectively for each market. I also looked for ways to improve the products and company along the way. For example, I invested in efficiency and quality when given the opportunity to do so. Also, market reports helped me make tailor made product improvements according to the expectations of each corresponding market.
How did you familiarize yourself with the simulation?
I watched the instructional videos and looked through the various reports available. I took advantage of my practice time with the simulation. During this time, I was able to make decisions according to information I read in the reports and see how the results of my decisions would play out in the simulation. Seeing how these decisions would positively or negatively affect my business was very helpful.
How would you describe the competition?
I would describe the competition as a high priority. In my opinion, it is equally important to pay attention to what your competition is doing as much as it is to pay attention to what your own company is doing. You can definitely create competitive advantages for your business depending on what your competition is doing or not doing.
What resources did you pull on to develop your winning strategy which led you to the top of your course and then top in the Hall of Fame?
Utilizing the reports made available to me in this simulation was crucial in developing a winning strategy. The information they provide allowed me to refine my decisions along the way and improve the accuracy of those decisions. Also, keeping an eye on my competition proved to be more valuable than I had originally anticipated.
What challenges did you face? How did you overcome these?
Lost sales became a challenge for me on more than one occasion. Every time I expanded my product line, I incurred lost sales in each of the new markets. To correct this, I increased the number of units available for sale in each of those markets. Occasionally, I would have to buy more SCU to produce more units. Paying attention to my market share and future market demand helped me eliminate lost sales.
Was there anything in particular you did that you think helped to prepare yourself?
I think taking advantage of the practice time to learn about the simulation really helped me. Getting to know the reports available and the information they contain are advantageous in making solid decisions and taking informed calculated risks.
How has participating within a course which uses a business simulation to supplement their teaching materials helped you? What do you think of the business simulation?
I think it helped me in learning about and understanding how to read various business reports. It is important to know what information to look for when making any decision for your company. The interactive platform is a great way to experience making decisions for a business and seeing the outcome of those decisions.
Comments on your experience with the simulation itself
I really enjoyed my experience with the Mike’s Bikes simulation. Engaging in the simulation is an interesting and fun way to learn. It provided me with valuable tools and experience when addressing a company’s business decision making process. Being that every Mike’s Bikes experience is unique to that user, it is a simulation I would participate in again.
We have interviewed the 2018 MikesBikes World Champs winner, Whatever-Go with Wiput Tantulaphongse, Yijing Tang, Meiyicong Lin, Zhen Peng and Fengkai Han from University of Auckland. They have also managed to achieve the second highest Shareholder Value from the past 9 MikesBikes World Champs!
From left to right: Meiyicon Lin, Fengkai Han, Zhen Peng, Wiput Tantulaphongse
In this interview they talk about their experience in the simulation, their decision-making process, strategy and advice to future students.
Smartsims: What is your decision making process within the simulation and in the competition?
Whatever-Go: First of all, we look at the information in the Scenario Tab then we discuss about the strategy of the investment. The decision was based on the forecast market volume and the expected market share of our team. The expected market share is derived from the advertising expenditure and the target price. Moreover, we calculated the capacity needed to produce the expected amount of bikes two years in the future. The last decision made on the financial aspect. We simulated cash flow analysis and expected equity in the next rollover, so, we had the rough idea of how our cash on hand would be, and the likelihood of achieving that target. All of the decision made was influenced by the forecast of competitors’ decision as well.
Smartsims: What was your strategy going into the simulation?
Whatever-Go: Our strategy is to be the market leaders who produced high quality products with reasonable price. This strategy needs a thorough analysis of every aspect including marketing, product development, financing, and production as a whole. We had to understand the risk of each decision made in the particular rollover. We invested heavily in product development and advertisement in the first three rollovers because we expected to secure the highest market share earlier than our competitors. The forecast of the cash balance was really important to understand the sensitivity of financial information.
For example, if the expected market share change by 1%, we need to know how this would affect the ending cash balance. So, we can prepare the financing strategy whether we should take debt or equity financing. In the middle of the competition, we focused on optimizing the operation activities and maintaining a reasonable market share regardless of the price of products. We estimated the contribution margin of each product to ensure that every single product lines made the profit the team.
Every rollover, we aim for the highest profit which is the ultimate goal of a business. Moreover, we also focused on giving the dividend to shareholders. For the last two rollovers, we invested in investor PR to help our SHV and tried to maintain the investor PR index at 1 which is the optimal point.
Smartsims: What challenges did you face? How did you overcome these?
Whatever-Go: The most challenging part is the first three rollovers.
First rollover: We were not sure what the price of the Adventurer bike would be. If we set the price too high, it would lead to having a low profit in the following rollover. If we set the price too low, we could end up with loss sales which means loss of profits. In addition, we had to come up with the strategy for our product development. We had to guess which market to place the bike into. Finally, we decided to develop Adventurer and Kids bikes. We made the decision based on the profitability of Adventurer in the long run because we can double the profit of the Adventurer segment by investing 2-3 million. For kids segment, we had the assumption that most of the competitors would develop Racers. We decided to take a risk in developing a product in the Kids segment. The assumption in that moment was to take 30%-50% of kids market and gain a huge amount of profit rather competing in the “red ocean market” of Racers segment.
Second and Third rollovers: It was challenge to guess the competitors’ strategy. We had to estimate and monitor changes in price, awareness, PR, and quality of our competitors’ product. This helped us to understand the trend of each competitors and we adjusted our plan accordingly.
For both situations, teamwork is the answer to overcome all of these challenging issues. The more we share to the team, the more solutions we came up with.
Smartsims: Was there anything, in particular, you did that you think helped to prepare yourself?
Whatever-Go: Cash flow analysis, cash balance sensitivity analysis, product development plan (for the whole simulation period), and the most important part is to understand how advertising, operations, finance and product development are linked together, and how the simulation software works. Read the Players Manual!!!
Smartsims: What do you think of the business simulation?
Whatever-Go: The simulation needs comprehensive decision making method.
This is one of the best activities we have done so far throughout the course.
MikesBikes shows every single element in the accounting perspective such as balance sheet, cash flow statements, statement of change in equity, and the costing information for management accounting. This is the good experience for management students so far.
Smartsims: Comments on your experience in your course simulation and with the MikesBikes World Champs
Whatever-Go: We had fun in the course and found that in MikesBikes World Champs is far more challenging because of the additional rules such as the limitation of numbers of development in a roll.
Smartsims: Advice to future students
Whatever-Go: Focus on your business strategy, set the target, think about the plan to achieve the target, adjust your decisions based on the business environment, focus on every aspect equally (advertising, operations, finance, R&D) because each decision supports each other and contribute to your overall Shareholder Value.
Our 2018 MikesBikes World Champs is Whatever-Go from University of Auckland! Big congratulations to Wiput Tantulaphongse, Yijing Tang, Meiyicong Lin, Zhen Peng and Fengkai Han for this outstanding achievement! They have managed to achieve the second highest Shareholder Value from the past 9 MikesBikes World Champs!
In second place, we have Swan from De Anza College with Makysm Chernenko and in third place, we have NGUYEN Inc with Nguyen Pham from Selkirk College. Incredible work, well done!
Our winners had the following to say:
First Place Winner: Whatever-Go from University of Auckland
Wiput Tantulaphongse, Yijing Tang, Meiyicong Lin, Zhen Peng and Fengkai Han
“This is one of the best activities we have done so far throughout the course. We had fun in the course and found that in MikesBikes World Champs is far more challenging because of the additional rules such as the limitation of numbers of development in a roll.”
We have also interviewed Whatever-Go about their experience, decision-making process and advice to future students.
Second Place Winner: Swan
Makysm Chernenko
“I believe MikesBikes game is a must have experience for every student majored in Business. It gives amazing possibilities for everyone to implement their own strategies on the highest level and check outcomes most of us will never get in real life.”
Makysm has also been featured in their college’s News page. You can check it out here.
Third Place Winner: NGUYEN Inc from Selkirk College
Nguyen Pham
“I would love to say thanks to the Smartsims Business Simulations for organizing the MikesBikes World Championship, so I had a chance to compete with other students from other Universities and Colleges around the world and learn from them as well.”
Congratulations to everyone who participated in the competition! It was incredible to see your progress after each rollover! It shows that you were able to apply everything you’ve learned in class in the simulation. You have carried your team and your school with pride. You should be proud of how far you’ve come! We wish wish you all the best! Thank you so much for your support in this year’s MikesBikes World Champs!
Pos
Firm
SHV
Team Members
School
1
Whatever – Go
$490.59
Wiput Tantulaphongse | Yijing Tang | Meiyicong Lin | Zhen Peng | Fengkai Han
University of Auckland
2
Swan
$241.53
Maksym Chernenko
De Anza College
3
NGUYEN Inc
$140.16
Nguyen Pham
Selkirk College
4
Booster Inc.
$134.60
Ahmet Yasin Kuzucu
Dokuz Eylul University
5
Momentum Bikes
$41.73
Alicia Covert | Mike Covert
Baker University
6
CyclePath
$34.04
William George Jr | Maxwell Schuler | Jonas Correa | Jared Lerner | Axel Miazga
The Business Masters students taught by Professor Darl Kolb from the University of Auckland were suited and booted for their final presentations on the MikesBikes Advanced Strategic Management Simulation.
“The MikesBikes simulation combines elements of strategy, marketing, operations, product design and human resource management within a complex competitive environment. Besides the business and management aspects, the simulation provides a place for leadership to emerge as it did in these successful teams. I am always proud of all our simulation teams, but seeing so many of our students do so well on the world stage makes me immensely proud.”
– Professor Darl Kolb
Check out some of the photos from the final presentation:
You can’t look at the competition and say you’re going to do it better. You have to look at the competition and say you’re going to do it differently.
-Steve Jobs
Students from New Jersey Institute of Technology definitely did things differently which led them to succeed in the The Fourth Annual Strategic Management Showcase with MikesBikes Advanced! The Showcase concluded last 30th of November with great success!
The Top 6 teams across the Strategic Management course competed head-to-head to achieve the highest Shareholder Value in MikesBikes Advanced.
The winning team, ALY BikeZ consisted of Aditya Patel, Luke Gregory and Yandy Gonzalez-Acevedo.
In second place we have CycloTherapy with Dikasse Zalla, Rosa Lee Moss and William Penn.
In third place we have CTS Bikes with Christopher Kukla, Spencer Kapp and Thomas Brady.
Congratulations to ALY BIkeZ and to all the participants! Well done and we wish you all the best!
