Introduction to Simulations

Company simulators, originally called "Business Games", are now computerised pre-designed scenarios used to develop decision-making abilities through the observation of decision outcomes, that is, actual learning from the consequences of decisions in a virtual reality. Participants become "virtual managers" during a short but intense period of time, because computerised simulations compress time and save real resources.
Labams nine different scenarios are computerised in order to represent adequately complex real conditions and accelerate the acquisition of experience in decision-making in a multidimensional way. Two kinds of scenarios have been built in for Labams: generalist scenarios, where participants face a wide range of decision issues, a horizontal dimension, and specialised scenarios, built vertically, where participants concentrate on the intricate decision-making issues of just one specialised staff, or line function, and where the influence and real intervention of other functional areas has been deliberately obliterated, albeit credibly and reflecting real and current business conditions. For instance in one simulation, the marketing function has been minimised so that the purchase and efficient allocation of capital is highlighted, just like in the case of companies in commodities and raw materials. In another simulation, in contrast, the marketing function is supreme, organised as a profit centre, where the purchase and allocation of capital is the responsibility of a different profit centre, just like in the case of consumer goods companies, both durable and non-durable. Yet another simulation portrays the huge services sector, where the traditional "production" function literally does not exist and business strategies have a peculiar mixture of collaboration and competition.
The accumulation of experience through the several virtual simulations of Labams has been estimated to accumulate in participants the equivalent of between 15 and 20 years of actual decision-making experience. The experience accumulation function for professors has not been estimated but can be assumed to be rather greater.