Business Simulations: Competing Against The Computer

Hello SimDevGroup Community-

Apologies for the tardy post. We moved our offices to a new location. Need I say more? Didn't think so.

Lets repeat a question we're often asked: Do Business Training Simulations require that I compete against the computer? We say, "No! Try to avoid this!"

Having participants compete against a computer is actually kind of a bad idea. Why? Because participants don't believe the outcome and they know it's rigged. Also, people by nature love to have friendly competitions. Why do you think games are so much fun and so popular. This would also explain the explosion in social networked based collaborative games online. We advise you to take a hard look. Are the business training simulations you're currently using forcing the participants to compete against a bunch of computerized assumptions or are your participants competing against their peers?

In some cases, competing against an unreal competitor is fine. In most of the cases where companies are trying to teach specific skills (especially leadership development), this method just doesn't fit. All modeling should be relative to peers, not relative to R2D2. Having an R2D2 based competitor is a cheap way out of a complex solution. Its best if the teams see results based on the decisions of their peers. Just our humble opinion based on what we've see work and not work within the world of business simulations for corporate learning and development.

Have a great weekend.

Business Simulations and Assessment

Hello SimDevGroup Community-

Are business training simulations good for employee assessments? Yes they are, but we recommend being cautious with this.

We're not saying its a bad idea. Its actually a very interesting way to assess an employee's business capabilities. We only mention caution because if you try to assess and teach at the same time, most people who are making decisions within the business simulation will focus on trying to score highly. Thus, learning will be a very distant second. Its a great idea. We just recommend separating the two.

We have seen using a business training simulation for assessment and training both succeed and fail. As usual, it depends on the training topics, methods, and content. But, the short answer to, "Can I use a business training simulation for assessment?" is: Yes you can. Just think it through carefully. :)

Hope this helps!

Remember, Business Simulations Are Poor Instructors

Hello SimDevGroup Community-

We know, we know. We've said this many times (especially when you talk with us): Simulations are terrible instructors! Shall we repeat it? Thought not.

Ok, why are we bringing up the fact that business simulations or leadership simulations are terrible instructors? Well, this is because we have suddenly received a lot of calls lately about stand alone business training simulations as an instruction program. This is a poor fit for a business simulation. Business simulations are simply a highly effective tool for training content reinforcement. The best business simulations are those that reinforce YOUR training content (not some generic content or remote theory).

An effective business simulation is one that enables your training participants to practice and apply your training content. Instructor led (whether distance or local) is still the best way to encourage collaborative learning and people learn best from people. But a business training simulation is an exceptional tool to enable a safe way for participants to experience the positive impact of your training content on your business.

So, once again, a business training simulation or leadership development simulation is great for content reinforcement and application, but not so good as a stand alone instructor. For now, we'll leave it at that until we feel the need to repeat it once again ;^).

Have a great weekend!

Business Simulations Running on an iPad

Hello SimDev Community-

As always, we have been very busy with R&D. We love R&D and wish that this is all we could do. Obviously, this isn't a good business model so we squeeze in R&D on a very structured basis. But, one of the projects we've been focusing on is building a business simulation that runs on an iPad. Well, we've done it. It runs great and is a lot of fun to use. Is it better than a traditional platform? No, not necessarily, but it does have the sizzle factor. We've done user testing and its great for 1 person per ipad, but terrible for teams. This probably doesn't come as a major shocker, but worth mentioning.

These simulations take a lot of time to create because it requires they be written in Cocoa (within XCode) which is a very specialized application development environment that is on Mac OS X only. But... running a leadership simulation on an iPad is a lot of fun. We had a good time building it, runs well, but we're just looking for the right fit. This of course, depends on the customer. Thus, if you're really looking to run a simulation on an iPad, let us know, but be ready for some usage tradeoffs. iPads are still single user devices.

Have a great long weekend!