Six students from Rafik Beekun's Strategic Management and Policy class in the College of Business Administration are learning what it takes to succeed in the real world of business. Team Aristotle Inc. beat out 970 other teams from 70 different national and global universities to finish first in the ninth week of competition in the GLO-BUS competition this spring semester.
The GLO-BUS competition is a fully automated online business simulation where students run their own company and compete against other companies (teams) in the same industry in real time. Team Aristotle and its competition, including other teams from Beekun's class, managed a digital camera company for the competition. Each week, the students made decisions that would translate into a year's worth of decisions for the company.
"Basically we sit down each week and discuss what we would like to change within the game, after we have studied the reports for the last year, or the last week's decision," team member Katie Gianoli said. "This game lets us do everything from design the cameras, pick the number of cameras we want to market, prices points, marketing, loan payback period and more."
The GLO-BUS competition forces students and teams to think and act as if they were truly running an international camera company. In the game, each company, like Team Aristotle, has to make 44 types of decisions throughout the semester that will directly affect the company's success. Each time a team enters a decision, GLO-BUS makes an assortment of on-screen calculations that instantly project the effects on unit sales, revenues, market shares, unit costs, profit, earnings per share and others. From there, teams review their results and adjust for the next week's decisions.
The challenge for each team in the competition is to execute a competitive strategy that keeps up brand image of the camera, positions the company as a global leader in cameras, and has financial success. For the ninth week, Team Aristotle finished with 110 points, which was the best in the worldwide competition, and a stock price of $203.74.
Finishing in first place during this past week of the competition is not the first time Team Aristotle has met those challenges and succeeded. They have placed in the top 25 numerous times and for the week of March 5-11 they were ranked number one and for the week of April 9-15 they came in second for the entire competition.
"This Management 496 class is definitely one of the best group of students which I have taught recently," Beekun said. "Aristotle has been one of my best teams, if not the best."
The six students that make up Team Aristotle are: James Barnes, Katie Gianoli, Patrick Jorgensen, Kevin Ladd, Arielle Recine and Dan Schmittel.
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