Strategy - What about it ??

Ok guys, I am back now after a sumptuous meal and now working on my assignment. While I do that, thought I would share a bit about assignments, projects and my favourite module. As you all know MBA is a course for experienced professionals and hence it is more practical oriented than academics. We have plenty of case studies and project work which gets us familiar with the real business world out there. So all the modules are aimed to test the practicality of the academia and also relate it to the past experiences each student carries. The best of them all and my favourite is the strategy module. This module is divided into theory, case studies and simulation task. Theory tells you all the research that has been made and what different authors have to say. Case studies will give you the facts how different companies followed their strategy and what was the end result of it. The best part is the simulation where you are in a virtual business environment and you need to make decisions based on the data available. The class was divided into teams for the simulation task and we were given a project to run a car manufacturing company in a virtual environment and decide on the strategy about how many cars to be produced, how much to be invested on promotions, work force, R&D etc. The market environment and the demand for different type of cars is provided to all the teams and each team should formulate their strategy to be competent. Earlier I had a feeling that it is just a game and doesn’t reflect the real world. But as we progressed into later weeks of this simulation task, we all realized how it exactly works in the market out there. As a strategic manager none has access to all the information in the market and there is no proved formula that a business can follow to be successful. Had that been the case all the companies would have been successful and running into profits and there would have been no management school existent to teach. The reality is on a careful analysis of the data and speculation of the market you have to make important decisions. All the teams were asked to put in use the theories proposed on this subject into our simulation strategy and then critically analyse these theories based on the experiences we gain out of the simulation business. This gives an opportunity to the students to understand all the theories and how to apply them successfully in a business when they graduate out of the school. We have a group presentation and an assignment at the end to showcase our understanding of all the theory and also critically analyse them. This is a perfect example of the approach every academic student should be taking and I am very glad that the University is following this approach. So on that note, I leave you all to speculate about the theories and their implementation in real world while I get back to my assignment for some critical analysis. I will come back to you guys soon to share how my assignment went on. Love and more !!