The Business Simulation Blog

Sylvie Humbert from the Grenoble Institute of Technology (INP Grenoble) has been an integral part of the organizing team of our recent Business Simulations Workshop in France. She is an educator in marketing, industrial marketing and business development, as well as a supporter of innovative projects. In this interview, she talks about her experiences with business simulation games for engineering students, and what advice she'd give to fellow educators thinking of trying them out in their courses or training programs.

CBSTeach at Copenhagen Business School is the brainchild of Ravi Vatrapu and is a part of the Technology enhanced Teaching and Learning (TeTL) project. Its objective is to provide a portal with technical and human resources for teaching with information and communication technologies.

Our recent business simulations workshop organized by our friends at Grenoble Ecole de Management was a roaring success. We want to thank participants for spending a great day with us learning about how to strategize with business simulation games (in French: Comment former à la stratégie par la simulation?).

One of the hot topics of the education industry currently is the learning assessment of students and how to measure whether business school students truly derive that much touted value from their oftentimes expensive studies. After all, one of the hardest jobs teachers have is to ensure that they aren't merely reciting lecture slides, but pass on and create valuable knowledge in an increasingly demanding environment. Notice that I intentionally used the word 'create' in addition to 'pass on', to highlight the growing importance of collaborative learning in all disciplines, where knowledge is indeed created by the discussion amongst students as much as by the educator's contribution.

Michael J. Geringer, a Cesim business simulations expert, is previously a Professor of Strategy and International Business at the Orfalea College of Business at California Polytechnic State University at the time of conducting this interview, currently a Professor of International Strategy at College of Business of Ohio University. He has over 30 years of experience with research and consulting on strategic issues for private and public sector organizations worldwide. He has authored or edited 27 books and monographs (in English, French, Chinese and Indonesian) and published over 140 papers, including within Journal of International Business Studies, Academy of Management Journal, Thunderbird International Business Review, Strategic Management Journal, and Journal of Applied Psychology.