Students in the Naveen Jindal School of Management frequently play — and succeed at — Business Strategy Game (BSG), an online simulation that provides them with practical experience in operating a business and competing to win.
A recent results list of the Global Top 100 Performers — the game is ongoing and results are tallied weekly — displayed no fewer than 53 entries from Jindal School classes, including one team that tied for first place overall with a perfect score. That week, 4,257 teams from 262 colleges and universities worldwide had competed.
Dr. Shawn Carraher, a clinical professor in the Organizations, Strategy and International Management Area, requires all students in his International Marketing courses to participate in BSG. His expectations are great, and his students almost never disappoint him.
“I try to focus on how the students can differentiate themselves, he said. “I set high standards for them, and then they seek to achieve them.”
Part of the trick to high achievement is to get students to enjoy themselves. Dual-degree grad student David Nobles labels BSG “just a whole bunch of fun.” An MS in finance and MBA student, Nobles has competed three times and in July finished first with his company Apple iShoe, which tied that week with three other UT Dallas teams from Carraher’s classes.
Nobles said he can spend hours in the gaming environment because “it helps you either reinforce what you’re already thinking about how things work, or it changes the way you think.”
BSG, a massively multiplayer online real-time strategy game, simulates an international athletic footwear company by scoring participants in several areas that parallel the real-world market, including earnings per share, return on investment, stock price and overall score.
Carraher’s teams consistently score in the Global Top 100, Top 50 and Top 25. Last semester, another of Carraher’s students, Daniel Blough, a senior majoring in information technology and systems, finished in first place.
“It ended up being my favorite assignment that I’ve ever had at UT Dallas,” Blough said. “It’s not like a normal assignment where you complete something, turn it in and you’re done with it. This was something we were working on consistently throughout the semester.”
What especially appealed to Bough was the competitive aspect of the game. He focused on winning and felt that the grade was simply a bonus. Because he placed first, he was invited to compete in the Best-Strategy Invitational, another global completion that pits first-place winners against one another. He took first in that competition, too, with his company, KNO3.
His takeaways from the experience were twofold:
“You have to know your business inside and out, and you have to be able to recognize your competition,” Blough said. “Then you will be able to recognize when your competitor makes a move, how it will affect your business and how you need to adjust to be successful.”
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