Alexey Chuvaev, Associate Professor of the Management Department of NSTU NETI Business Faculty has developed a "A-Unit» business simulation board game which approximates the activities of an enterprise. The game helps players to build a unit economy business model for a company, i.e., to make a profit or loss forecast per client. This methodology of a business model design is often used to create innovative startups.
The set of the board business game "A-Unit" includes a description of the business simulator, the situation, the environment and the general mechanics of its work, the main indicators of the unit economy and their formulas. There are the baselines (starting values of the company's performance indicators) and rules for the teams (description of the teams ' actions in the decision-making process), improvement cards that are bought by teams from developers and consultants, decision-making cards and independent development cards, the internal game currency of 1, 5, 10, 20, 50 Aces and special pens with which you can write on the cards and then easily erase what is written.
Unit economics is an economic modeling technique used to determine the profitability of a business model by evaluating the profitability of a production unit or a single customer.
One of the main functions of business simulators is an educational one. The goal is to convey the material as efficiently as possible and to form decision-making skills. "A-Unit" will teach to make decisions in the unit economy sector, to understand how the business model of the company is built, how this or that parameter affects the business model and profitability of the company.
The simulator allows implementing gamification technologies and practice-oriented approach to teaching students. The business simulator models the activity of an enterprise in a competitive environment where players make their managerial decisions. The computer program processes their decisions and shows a certain result. The players then can analyze it and form the idea at what stage they did everything right, and at what stage they chose the wrong path of the enterprise development or made a mistake, consequently change their tactics in the next period," says Alexey Chuvaev, Associate Professor of Management Department, developer of "A-Unit" business simulator.
The task of the "A-Unit" players is to earn the maximum possible profit for 5 periods by managing the company. The players are to use traditional Internet companies promotion channels, such as "Yandex" and Google, and attract customers through contextual advertising. In the game mode, students pay a certain cost for each click. By spending money on advertising, they attract traffic to their site. After that, some people become buyers. Companies sell, produce and deliver products to customers.
"During the development, the real companies' work was analyzed which resulted in the main parameters choice as well as the design of the conceptual model for the business simulation including the cooperation of companies in the virtual market and a way to attract traffic to the site. The main task was to get as close as possible to the existing reality without going into minor details to achieve a certain balance in terms of accessibility and efficiency of the educational process. Then everything was structured as a simulation model in MS Excel which allows a quick evaluation of the managerial decisions results. The board game based business simulator with an original design and internal currency was developed to increase the level of interactivity", says Alexey Chuvaev.
The business simulation involves the main parameters of the unit economy which are the guidelines for the real sector of the economy managers: a potential buyer contact cost, an average check, variable costs per unit, fixed cost, conversion and buyers loyalty.
"The difference of this business simulator is primarily its subject: a very limited number of business simulators deal with the unit economy sector and allow competing for visitors, setting the cost of a click, as it happens in reality," Alexey Chuvaev comments.
