Strategic Innovation Simulation Self-Reflection Report

This simulation is designed to bridge theories in innovation and the impact of an emerging, disruptive technology to the real-world context in which managers must make decisions about investing in innovative technologies under conditions of uncertainty. The simulation takes you within a decision context where you have to make investment choices in both mature and emerging technologies under uncertainand highly constrainingreal-world conditions.

During the simulation, each student will have an opportunity to test various strategies in an effort to optimize the firms profitability over a number of years. View each repetition as an experiment and try to learn the most from it. You will be given enough trials to be able to develop a sensible strategy on how to approach the investment decision in the specific decision context.

After the simulation, each one of you has to spend time debriefing your strategies and the lessons learned during the simulation. You are asked to prepare a write-up (3-5 pages plus needed exhibits) to address the following questions. The deadline for submitting the simulation report is Mar 25th before class. Please send me the electronic file via email.

1. Explain the rationale of your most successful strategy in the simulation. How did you arrive to this rationale? Did you pursue sustaining or disruptive innovation strategies as part of your resource (investment) allocation decisions? Were they successful? What data did you use to decide which target markets to use for your different products? What was your experimentation strategy in using the different trials? In your report, you have to clearly explain the used logic, and also show me the outcomes of the strategy. (Use relevant data and graphs from the simulation. All your data is archived and you can access it easily.)

2. If you had one more trial effort, what would you have done differently, and why? Clearly explain the weaknesses of your previous efforts, and convince us on the benefits of your proposed but untested strategy in this new trial.

3. Going beyond the narrow confines of the simulation, summarize the lessons you learned via the simulation about investments in innovation in a multi-product/multi-project organizational context, and on the challenges of allocating resources between existing technologies & products and new technologies.