MBA Students Take Part in War Game Competition

The event, in which 12 International MBA students participated, offered an immersive experience through the learning fundamentals of competitive intelligence, scenario planning, and war games. Participants attended virtual workshops about strategic planning and competitive intelligence.

“During the pandemic, we want to be able to bring something global, experiential learning and pedagogical to students without traveling internationally. We felt that a War Game could work well online,” said Linda Kao, Assistant Dean of Global Programs at SMU. “IE students could bring a different perspective and insights and it would be beneficial for everyone to work across culture and time zone collaboratively and win the strategic challenges!”

War games are structured role-playing workshops which are used to generate insights that aid to develop and refine a strategy. Business war gaming can improve decision making, It simulates the moves and counter moves of important companies and influencers in the marketplace to anticipate what they will do when the market dynamics change.

Several prominent companies like Samsung, Nestle, and Microsoft use War Games as an important business tool.

The virtual world game topic was “The Battle for the Cloud,” which focused on the cloud industry and had six teams represent key players in the market. The teams, which mixed the students from the three schools, had to understand their role as a company and develop a strategy under uncertain circumstances that would allow them to showcase their value proposition.

“This experience has broadened my horizon about the cloud computing arena and helped me understand competitive intelligence and the various strategies required for different scenarios. It has also taught me about wargames and their necessities in different situations to ensure optimal results.”
Rajshekar Hm, IMBA student from the winning team

Judges composed by senior faculty and industry professionals selected the competition winners. The winning team was given IBM as their company with the scenario “a major ransomware attack has crippled all cloud providers globally”. Organized by short term, mid term and long term strategies, the team devised a strategy that would work with law enforcements and governments, utilize AI to predict future cyber attacks, and re-build customer trust, among other tactics.

“The War Game Competition was a unique opportunity to understand how these War Games work and help students develop their strategy skills working with multicultural teams from other business schools and getting key insights from industry leaders,” said Francisco Rojo, an International MBA alum who represented IE on the jury panel.

“I was impressed by the quality of the deliverables, the students performed extremely well given the limited deadline. I want to thank IE for this amazing experience and for allowing me to contribute to the community.”
Francisco Rojo