Every year, the global leader in intelligence for business strategy, Fuld & Co. hosts a "war game", giving four business schools the opportunity to compete for a $5000 prize. This year's spirited competition titled "The Battle for the Wireless Internet", featured the B-schools from Harvard, MIT, University of Chicago, and Northwestern. And the winner was . . . (drumroll, please!) Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management, representing Intel.
The kernel of their strategy was to dominate the handheld wireless market with a new chip. As we mentioned in our Herman Trend Alert of 03-04-08 and an earlier blogpost, we were struck by the diversity of the teams. In fact, one of the teams didn't include one United States-born student. Each B-school team included one woman; one team even had two.
It was fascinating to watch the students build off of other teams' strategies to gain the upper hand. One of the judges called to their attention that they failed to address the issue of adult content on wireless, handheld devices. Another stated he believes, "Intel is the most important company in the technology industry". Still another interesting fact we learned was that Microsoft shipped 5 times the number of mobile devices that RIM did last year.
For someone who is as much into technology as I am, it was a great way to learn about this emerging industry.
A couple of years ago, we wrote a Herman Trend Alert acknowledging that the Future of Training was simulation and gaming. The future is here today.
Fuld & Co. regularly conducts these types of war games for its clients, giving the participants opportunities to see unique perspectives as they explore possible future scenarios and deal with wildcards.
Not only is this type of gaming helpful for developing strategy, but it is also an outstanding training tool while it supports employee retention.
Kudos to Fuld!
Looking Forward. . .
Joyce Gioia-Herman
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