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Simulaciones de Empresa: Aprendizaje mediante la Experiencia

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Las simulaciones de gestión de empresa - o "business games" - son unas potentes herramientas de aprendizaje que hacen posible que los participantes en las mismas puedan aprender sobre los factores que influyen en las distintas áreas de sus negocios comunicándose, argumentando, negociando, compitiendo, tomando decisiones, alcanzando compromisos y poniendo a prueba sus ideas de manera creativa sin exponerse a los riesgos propios de una situación real.

Los participantes tienen que manejar información -cuantitativa y cualitativa- y fijarse objetivos que podrán alcanzar total o parcialmente. Experimentan también las consecuencias de sus propias decisiones y acciones y tienen que hacer frente a las múltiples incertidumbres surgidas de la incompleta comprensión que tienen de la situación y de las acciones de sus competidores y de otras entidades externas.

Las simulaciones no pueden ofrecer una experiencia real, pero ofrecen lo más parecido a la misma, una experiencia indirecta de carácter casi adictivo por la fuerte motivación que generan en los participantes gracias a su carácter participativo e interactivo y a los factores competitivos que producen altos niveles de compromiso. La gran mayoría de los participantes en simulaciones de empresa mencionan que su participación en las mismas fue su experiencia de aprendizaje más provechosa y memorable.

Las simulaciones de empresa sumergen a los alumnos en un entorno simulado en el que pueden desarrollar todo tipo de tareas de dirección y gestión de forma práctica, de forma que puedan comprender su funcionamiento interno y dominar las habilidades necesarias para su concepción, planificación e implantación. A diferencia de lo que ocurre con el "role play", los participantes no tienen que "actuar". Sus emociones, personalidades y motivos éticos son los suyos y no están determinados por ningún "rol." Tienen, simplemente, que utilizar su propia inteligencia, habilidades, experiencia y comportamientos para desarrollar un trabajo funcional determinado (líder del equipo, ejecutivo, directivo, trabajador, vendedor, cliente, dependiendo del contenido de la simulación) recurriendo a la ética del mundo real para guiar sus decisiones.

"Las simulaciones de empresa son herramientas de aprendizaje que pueden ayudar a los participantes a aprender nuevas habilidades y comprender el proceso de toma de decisiones. Los directivos y los empleados de cualquier empresa pueden aprender, por ejemplo, como crear y trabajar en un equipo de proyecto o en una empresa simulada o como resolver los problemas que se les planteen, en un entorno libre de riesgos en el que no tienen por que preocuparse por la pérdida de capital o de sus medios de supervivencia." (Harvard Business Review).

El Blog de Ricardo Lucas

Accenture recomienda las simulaciones de empresa como herramienta para el aprendizaje y la implantación de estrategias competitivas de alto impacto: Los profesionales del aprendizaje saben hace tiempo que los juegos serios son una herramienta que permiten que los participantes en la experiencia de aprendizaje se sumerjan rápidamente en la misma con resultados extraordinarios: una asimilación acelerada de contenidos y un aprendizaje y refuerzo de comportamientos nuevos con una rapidez y una tasa de recuerdo hasta un 70% mayores que las que se consiguen con los métodos didácticos tradicionales.
La convergencia entre mundos virtuales, juegos serios y simulaciones educativas: los Highly Interactive Virtual Environments (HIVE): Clark Aldrich ha publicado en su blog un post muy interesante sobre la convergencia entre mundos virtuales, juegos y simulaciones de tipo educativo. Opina que muchos profesionales se enfrentan a una paradoja al observar un solapamiento entre esas tres categorías y percibir, al mismo tiempo, que son muy diferentes entre sí. Para resolver esta paradoja desarrolla su modelo de "Highly Interactive Virtual Environments" o HIVE, que proporciona una visión unificadora emergente del aprendizaje que, según Aldrich, constituye el futuro de la educación.
Service Management Simulator | El Blog de Ricardo Lucas: Este simulador ha sido diseñado para que los participantes comprendan los beneficios e inconvenientes derivados de la implantación de procesos basados en el marco ITIL y cómo una organización, concebida como una totalidad, puede mejorar la Gestión de los Servicios. Se trata de una forma divertida y productiva de desarrollar las habilidades de Gestión de Servicios y las prácticas ITIL.
Resolviendo problemas de negocio con las simulaciones de empresa online | El Blog de Ricardo Lucas: Imagine esta situación: trabaja para un escudería de automóviles de carreras que necesita recaudar 18 millones de dólares en patrocinios. ¿Escogería un patrocinador fiable que tan solo puede ofrecerle la mitad de esa suma o aceptaría la suma total de 18 millones de dólares de una empresa que tiene muy mala prensa debido a que está vendiendo armas a un país del Oriente Medio? Este es el escenario de "Eagle Racing" Collaborative Decision Simulation", una simulación de empresa diseñada para el aprendizaje de la toma de decisiones colaborativa.
El auge de los Juegos Serios (Serious Games) y de sus aplicaciones para el aprendizaje en entornos empresariales | El Blog de Ricardo Lucas: El sector de los "juegos serios" puede generar un cifra de negocio mayor durante la próxima década, que la del sector del entretenimiento interactivo. Esta es la opinión de Noah Falstein, experto en la utilización de juegos para el aprendizaje y CEO de The Inspiracy que, durante la XMediaLab Conference que tuvo lugar en Sidney la semana pasada, afirmaba que "es inevitable que los juegos de ordenador cuyos propósitos van más allá de la mera diversión, crezcan para eclipsar el mercado de los juegos de puro entretenimiento y, muy probablemente, esto ocurrirá durante los próximos diez años".

Documentos

Las simulaciones de empresa: una potente herramienta de aprendizaje: Las simulaciones de gestión de empresa son unas potentes herramientas de aprendizaje que hacen posible que los participantes en las mismas puedan aprender sobre los factores que influyen en las distintas áreas de sus negocios comunicándose, argumentando, negociando, compitiendo, tomando decisiones, alcanzando compromisos y poniendo a prueba sus ideas de manera creativa sin exponerse a los riesgos propios de una situación real. Los participantes tienen que manejar información -cuantitativa y cualitativa- y fijarse objetivos que podrán alcanzar total o parcialmente. Experimentan también las consecuencias de sus propias decisiones y acciones y tienen que hacer frente a las múltiples incertidumbres surgidas de la incompleta comprensión que tienen de la situación y de las acciones de sus competidores y de otras entidades externas. Las simulaciones no pueden ofrecer una experiencia real, pero ofrecen lo más parecido a la misma, una experiencia indirecta de carácter casi adictivo por la fuerte motivación que generan en los participantes gracias a su carácter participativo e interactivo y a los factores competitivos que producen altos niveles de compromiso. La gran mayoría de los participantes en simulaciones de empresa mencionan que su participación en las mismas fue su experiencia de aprendizaje más provechosa y memorable.
Leadership in Games and at Work: Implications for the Enterprise of Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games: Complex multiplayer online games foreshadow new possibilities for effective leadership and the future of work. An increasingly large portion of game play is collaborative and strategic, and it requires sustained interactions with several players. The engagement of games and the lessons they foster may influence a new gamer generation to expect real work that better resembles the structure of complex play. This project observed leadership in complex online games to allow a comparison between current leadership models and leadership in the games. We began with a contemporary model of leadership, The Sloan Leadership Model, which defines leadership in four dimensions - Sensemaking, Inventing, Relating and Visioning. The project goal was to see if the Sloan model, and by extension, other traditional models of leadership, need to be changed to account for game play. Observations included 50+ hours of game play, compiled into 11 movies illustrating different leadership issues. We also included first-hand reports from 6 expert players, 10 interviews with recognized guild leaders, and 171 respondents to an online open-ended survey about leadership in games. Conclusions include the following: leadership in the games includes all skills currently identified in the Sloan model, but puts a premium on the dimensions of Relating and Inventing. Leadership in the games happens fast, it encourages risk taking, it promotes temporary rather than permanent leadership roles, and there are numerous opportunities for leadership practice. The most important conclusion, however, was that game environments make leadership easier. Critical leadership features in game environments include virtual economies, transparency of metrics, and connection methods for inter-group communication. We conclude with predictions about the future of games and leadership in the enterprise, including comments about how games will highlight qualities of digital interactions increasingly important for online leadership, and qualities of leadership unique to games.
The anatomy of a business game: We describe in detail a business game, which has been used extensively in education for a decade. Although the business game is smaller than other
games, it is fairly realistic as it includes decisions on investments, production, prices, and advertising. Furthermore, the game has dynamic properties, in that decisions and financial states of the firms carry over from one period to
the next. There are not many so detailed descriptions of business games, although this is in demand. Such a complete mathematical description lays ground not only for alterations of the game, but also for developments of new
games. It can also provide a link to models used in micro-economic theory.
The Role of the Business Game in Management Education: The author defines a Business Game as an individual or group activity dealing with a simulation of a business situation involving some aspect of financial reporting and decision making. There are many other types of business simulations, often called Management Games which consider, for example, specific issues such as Selling Skills, Environmental Policy, and Absenteeism.
This paper will examine the design and most common applications of Business Games from Introduction to Business through to MBA support, and will be illustrated by OHP slide references to actual games developed by the author. The author will also provide demonstrations of software.
Analysis of City Challenge Business Management Game: Standard bureaucratic structures are progressively challenged in the modern competitive international arena, with the requirement to deliver services and products with increased efficiency and at lower costs. The limitation of bureaucratic responsibilities and of the work /reward ethic as traditionally defined, both at the individual level and between departments, naturally creates boundaries in which the role of the individual seems restricted. The development of individual management abilities may be curtailed by the internal bureaucratic power structures. When individuals feel they are being treated as just cogs in a wheel, their inherent potential may never be realised. Business management games are recognised as playing an important role in developing interpersonal behaviour skills and knowledge-based decision skills of employees and through team building contribute to improved performance of organisational systems.
Case Study: Using Problem Based Learning and a Business Game in Teaching Managerial Economics: This project was developed with the support of Curriculum Innovation Grant. It is based on two novel elements, Problem Based Learning (PBL) and a market simulation game, Synthesis. PBL serves as the learning approach and the market simulation game as the source of the (real time) problem set on which the learning approach is anchored. The main part of the course is designed as group work. Each team manages a single firm and sets its individual project and learning agenda. Formal problems are given to the teams in order to direct their learning process.
Game-Based Learning: How to Delight and Instruct in the 21st Century: To learn more about videogames in academe, I sought out the insights of five leading-edge thinkers in the field: James Paul Gee, J. C. Herz, Randy Hinrichs, Marc Prensky, and Ben Sawyer. All five had traveled to San Jose, California, in March 2004 for the Serious Games Summit at the annual Game Developers Conference.
We discussed the following six topics:
The dysfunctions of conventional instruction
The power of simulations
The importance of game-based learning communities
The reasons videogames promise a better learning future
The changes necessary for the new paradigm to take hold
The practical steps that colleges/universities and influential academics can take to move institutions down the trail blazed by USC and others
Videogames have changed: time to consider 'Serious Games'?: Interest in digital 'Serious Games' has been growing for the past three years across nonprofit, government and media sectors. A few development educators are already involved, and that number will likely grow significantly in coming years in both North and South. Benjamin G Stokes of NetAid explores three educational opportunities in games - raising public awareness, affecting behavior and empowering learners - and discusses collaborative ways to move the agenda forward.
Proceedings of the Serious Games Summit 2006: Serious Games Summit D.C. Proceedings:
Download notes from select speaker presentations
Sessions are organized within six overarching tracks, click the track name to see sessions within the given track:
Assesment & Results
All games must perform through commercial sales or critical reviews. Serious games, however, are challenged with performance that must be measured by more than user popularity. Whether it is meeting the learning objectives, satisfying the project mission goals, or enabling a less quantitative objective, we must define, measure, and provide results. This track combines case reports with overall sessions about providing assessment within games, and showcasing emerging results from successful projects.
Behind the Game
Understanding the subtle tradeoffs that developers deal with daily, how projects are budgeted and scheduled, and which technologies are most relevant are critical needs that can't be taken for granted. At the same time the game industry is one of the most dynamic industries around and even those who have mastered the basics must constantly keep up. This track includes presentations that demystify and debate the game development process, industry, talent, and technologies for non-entertainment oriented customers and projects.
Business & Deals
Most serious games don't sit on the shelf at the local game store. Instead, this market requires the user to buy in prior to the development. The result is a unique business environment for game developers that requires customers to go from 0 to 60 in short order to be able to properly define a project, recruit the right talent, and set up the correct relationship that will enable a project's success. This track informs customers and developers about the critical business models and methods that have enabled the current market to emerge, while also setting the stage for actual deals to take place.
Learning & Instructional Theory
At the heart of any serious game is a combination of exciting new ideas about learning and well-defined existing instructional methodologies. This track illustrates how the worlds of cognitive science, instructional design, and game development can work in unison to build better learning environments, applications, and methods. It also analyzes the inherent learning in games and the many meta-game aspects to learning that inhabit the field.
Products Within Projects
Serious games are rarely standalone products. They are a combination of projects and products, with the game being only one part of a major effort. The success of any serious game itself may reside in part or even whole in how the entire project operates. This track provides an exploration of the delta and relationship that exist between the core serious game product and its parent project.
Serious Game Design
Designing serious games requires that developers think about new issues related to learning, instruction, assessment, usability, and much more. This track focuses on the unique design issues related to serious games, and on tried and true game design methods that fuel interest in games as learning environments.

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