New Enterprise and Small Business Management and the YourCo. Simulation Game

New Enterprise and Small Business Management and
the YourCo. Simulation Game


Developed by Waverly Deutsch, Ph. D.

Clinical Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship

University of Chicago Graduate School of Business

The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business

5807 South Woodlawn Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60637

Tel 773.834.1134 Fax 773.834.4046

gsbwww.ChicagoGSB.edu/entrepreneur

Introducing YourCo


Experiential Learning at Chicago GSB


The Class: New Enterprise and Small Business
Management


YourCo. Simulation


Purpose


Play


Outcome

Elements of Performance

Conceptual

Knowledge

Domain

Knowledge

Action

Skills

Actions

Outcomes

Source: Davis and Hogarth 1992

GSB Entrepreneurship Curriculum


New Venture Strategy


Opportunity identification


Private Equity and New Venture Finance


Funding start
-
ups


New Venture Challenge


Business plan creation



But, what do you
do
?


New Enterprise and Small Business Management


Execution
–

“A vision without execution is a hallucination.”






Steve Case, AOL


Overview of the Course

1.
State of Entrepreneurship

2.
Entrepreneurial Characteristics and Start
-
up Business
Models

3.
Market Segmentation and Selection

4.
Marketing Tactics

5.
Sales

6.
Product Development

7.
Operations

8.
Growth Challenges

9.
Alternatives to Starting Your Own Business

10.
Diversification or Exit

YourCo. Simulation


“Year” in the life of a start
-
up


Idea, Proof
-
of
-
concept, Early Growth


Eight assignments paralleling course content

1.
Launch

2.
Market selection and 1
st

marketing campaign

3.
Sale

4.
Product improvement

5.
Operations

6.
Diversification or exit

7.
CRISIS

Report Format


2 Pages to address specific issue


Write a one paragraph elevator pitch describing your business.


Using your own backgrounds as the guideline, describe the management team.


Assess any critical holes in personnel and describe how you plan to fill those
holes.


Determine the amount of seed funding you need to launch and describe how you
raised it.



3 additional pages each assignment


Page 3
--

Tell me anything else I need to know about what happened during this
month of operations.


Page 4
–

Week 1: Create a basic budget for 1 year of operation. Each week:
show one month of burn.


Page 5
--

Describe how you arrived at the above. What data did you discover?
What sources did you look at? Who did you talk to?



A limited number of exhibits
–

resumes, graphics, data, etc.
–

are
allowed


Grading


There are 8 points per assignment


5 for the answer to the specific question


3 for how you arrived at it
–

methodology and research



Plus 2 potential bonus points for follow
-
up or miscellaneous




Points are awarded for


Creativity


Completeness


Credibility



Businesses models are assigned a difficulty multiplier
between .9 and 1.1



Winning team is guaranteed a “A” in the course


“Play” of the Game and the ROLL of Luck


In class challenges of critical accomplishments


YourCo. Probability Calculators










ROLL a 10 sided die to determine success


Other Accoutrement

REPRIEVE

LUCKY BREAK

INSTANT REPLAY

Outcomes


Key teaching points


Intellectual property, business licenses and permits, taxes, etc.


Insight learning


Networking

•
“I learned more in our one hour conversation with him than I could
have learned reading on the Internet forever.”


Experience

•
“This class kept me awake at night worrying about all the details of
our ‘fake’ business.”

•
“
I learned more about being an entrepreneur through this class than
I could have any other way, short of starting my own business.”

Thank you.

Waverly Deutsch

Waverly.deutsch@ChicagoGSB.edu