What are Marketplace Simulations?
Let your students experiment with entrepreneurship strategies in an engaging game-like exercise. They launch new products to the market and manage the entire product life cycle, from introduction to growth to maturity. Learning content is gradually and purposefully introduced as the market evolves.
Core Learning Content
| Entrepreneurship | Start up and run a new venture. Students face new issues, decisions, and information as they naturally unfold over the life-cycle of a company/product. A pitch to outside investors can be added to further contribute to entrepreneurial insights. |
| Marketing | Develop, price, and promote a portfolio of brands using strategies based upon segment needs, market size, price points, competition, and ability to adapt. |
| Sales | Create global expansion strategy based on market potential, costs, and available resources. |
| Manufacturing | Project demand, schedule production, and invest in capacity expansions. Manage inventory, lost sales, and excess capacity. |
| Accounting/Finance | Review intermediate level financial statements, brand profitability reports, and industry financial ratios in order to manage operations, cash, and profits. Plan ahead with multi-period pro forma accounting. Work with capital structure with equity and loan options. |
| Human Resources | Create compensation packages, including employee benefits, and affect employee productivity. |
| Business Negotiations | Negotiate R&D license agreements. |
Key Differences Between Entrepreneurship Simulations
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| Description | Focuses on the development and management of entrepreneurial strategy across all functional areas and over time. Establishes the need for strategic planning. Highlights the basics of entrepreneurship for a holistic view. | Focuses on the development and management of entrepreneurial strategy across all functional areas and over time. Extensive use of the tools of management is required for success. | Builds on Venture Strategy with a focus on Conscious Capitalism. Students consider all of the firm’s stakeholders and deal with HR, ethical, environmental, and sustainability issues. | Provides a deep understanding of the entire entrepreneurial venture in the global market. Students must deal with complex strategic and tactical issues across all functional areas in response to evolving international issues. |
| Typical courses | First course in entrepreneurship | Entrepreneurship and capstone business courses | Entrepreneurship, corporate governance, and capstone courses | Capstone, integrative entrepreneurship courses |
| Educational level | Second or third year undergraduate students | Third and fourth year undergraduates. Introductory courses at the master’s level are also viable | Advanced undergraduates; MBA / EMBA‘s | |
| Decision rounds | 6 decision rounds of 60 to 75 minutes | 6 decision rounds of 1.5 to 2 hours | 6 decision rounds of 2 to 3 hours | 8 to 12 decision rounds of 4 to 5 hours per round, 8 rounds are recommended. |
| Class size | 20 to 40 students. The optimal game size is 4-6 teams of 4-5 students, up to 8 teams are possible. Parallel games work well with larger classes. | |||
| Languages | English•, Spanish•, Polish•, Portuguese (Brazil)•, Lithuanian• | English. More languages and an 'against AI' version available in the Personal Computers version | English, Polish, Russian, Korean | English, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil) |
| * Created in cooperation with Conscious Capitalism® Inc | ||||
| • Compete against classmates or computer (all games playable against classmates) | ||||
Instructor Involvement
Instructor/student interaction is encouraged. Students are highly receptive to coaching, targeted lectures, and exercises that enhance their business acumen. A variety of these resources are provided to help instructors. In contrast, little effort is required to help students with Marketplace Live. Student work is self-guided with an intuitive interface, lectures, contextualizing videos, and detailed help files. A Balanced Scorecard is used for student feedback, management by the numbers, and grading.
"Thank you and the Marketplace Live team for a great semester. My entrepreneurship students learned a lot through the simulation. I plan to use it again this next semester and have invited one of our adjunct entrepreneurship professors to use the simulation"
- Ross O.
Dallas Baptist University
Innovative Learning Solutions