Strategy & Competitive Advantage
Compete head-to-head against every other team in a shared five-segment market. Set pricing, R&D, marketing and capacity each round; a deterministic engine runs the whole market and each round starts where the last ended. Teams state their strategy every round, and an AI Board Review checks what they did against what they said.
Inside Strategy Arena
Screens from a class in progress. Click any screen to see it full size.
Strategy Arena places student teams as executives of competing companies serving the same five-segment market (Traditional, Low End, High End, Performance, Size). Every team starts with the same company, and every round is a fiscal year: teams set each product's price, promotion and sales budgets, production and R&D targets (performance, size, MTBF), plus capacity, automation, finance (debt, equity, buybacks, dividends) and training, and a unit-sales forecast that sets production when production is left blank. When the round closes, a deterministic engine runs the whole market at once: each segment buys inside its price range and on fit, share rises steeply with fit, buyers walk away from overpriced or off-target products, and demand a team can't supply goes to its rivals. Each round starts where the last ended, so commitments compound: R&D lands a round later, capacity takes a round to build, and selling it back loses money. AI rival companies fill classes of fewer than four teams, an AI entrant attacks the most profitable segment mid-game, and the Executive tier adds a supplier cost shock. Results publish revenue, net income, stock price, ROS/ROA/ROE, segment shares and a perceptual map with each segment's ideals. Each round a team also saves a short strategy statement with its plan (target segments, a generic strategy and why); "said vs. did" on Results checks it against what the team did, and an AI Board Review (CEO peer, CFO, activist investor) reads the statement, the results, the rivals' moves and the team's answer to last round's question, then asks one question for next round. These are feedback, not score: one review per team per round plus one re-run, three model calls per review. Students can take one of four light roles that split the decision sheet (Strategy Lead, Product Lead, Pricing & Marketing Lead, Operations & Finance Lead): each part of the sheet names its owner and records who changed it, every student writes a short reflection after each round on what the Competitor Report and the Board Review showed, and once a class uses roles, role work is 20% of the suggested grade. One number ranks the class: the Strategy Score, the average of Market Position (share against a fair share), Strategic Agility (fit to the class's real segment ideals), Pricing Power (where prices sit in each range while share holds) and Profitability (profit against a fair share of the market's revenue), each built from every round played. Total rounds are 5 in the five-week format or 8 in the eight-week / semester formats.
Share this with your team— printable one-pager for a chair or procurement./for-your-team/strategy-arenaRead the five segments and their buying criteria, claim your roles (each owns part of the decision sheet), choose an initial positioning (cost leadership, differentiation, focus or best-cost), write it down as your first strategy statement, and submit your first set of decisions. Every team decides simultaneously.
Round 1 has published — standings, said vs. did and the first Board Review are in, and each student writes a first reflection from their role. Answer the board's question, respond to pricing pressure, decide whether to match or differentiate, and allocate R&D toward whichever segment you want to own.
Segment ideals have drifted. Performance customers want more perf; Size customers want smaller; Low End rewards older SKUs. An AI entrant launches in the segment with the fattest margins. Decide whether to chase, refocus, or defend the segments you already lead.
Capacity, automation and R&D bets made earlier pay off or bind. Debt, equity, buybacks and dividends shape the stock price, and a cash shortfall becomes a 14% emergency loan. On the Executive tier, a supplier cost shock squeezes margins.
Final round(s). The Strategy Score (Market Position, Strategic Agility, Pricing Power, Profitability, built from every round) settles the class standings.
A walkthrough from Jeff Forgrave, who built Boardroom Rivals.
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