Malone Business Students Excel in World Market
How do American students stack up against their peers in the world market? Pioneers are finding themselves at the top, thanks to a simulation activity with college participants from around the globe.
Professor of Business Administration Jack Harris is using a sophisticated online simulation called “GLO-BUS” in his senior-level Strategic Management class. With GLO-BUS, participants are assigned to run a digital camera company in head-to-head competition with their peers in the classroom and the results are compared to other teams from all over the world. The companies compete in a global market arena, selling go-pro type cameras and drone cameras online and to retailers in Europe-Africa, North America, Asia-Pacific, and Latin America.
“Working on the GLO-BUS simulation helped me put into perspective how much work truly goes into a business,” said Christina Williams ’21. “You have to constantly check the market and your competitors to make sure you're keeping up, and you have to create new ways to achieve your goals. I really appreciate this simulation because it shows me how hard work pays off and that you need to stay organized.”
Students make all decisions about the products in terms of quality, functionality, and production. They determine wages, benefits, bonuses, and incentives for the production teams. They also determine the marketing promotions, duration, and percentages as well as what kinds of stores they will sell in the various parts of the world.
“The GLO-BUS application gives students an opportunity to takes real business risks, work together as a team to make decisions, learn what changes are needed to better excel in the market, and apply data presented to us through our competitive intelligence report documents,” explained Nicholas Chaplik ’21.
In Harris’s course, students are divided into teams of three. Two of the Malone teams recently ranked in the top 100 in three different categories against 2000 to 3500 teams worldwide.
“I always knew that business covered a wide range of topics, from marketing, to accounting, to human resources,” said Nicholas Reese ’20. “However, going through the GLO-BUS simulation online truly opened my eyes to just how connected each of these aspects are to running a successful business.”
The students use the business knowledge they’ve gained from all their previous classes to complete this project. Harris was notified by GLO-BUS management about the teams’ top 100 rankings in an email that read, “You should be quite proud of your students for such an excellent performance — a performance that reflects quite well on you and the caliber of instruction that students are receiving in your course.”