Your Role

Welcome to Blue Ocean Strategy Simulation (BOSS) !

You and your team will take over the management of a fictitious company in the video game console market. You will be leading the company over the next nine years.  At the beginning of each year you have to make key strategic decisions.  A computer model will simulate your performance during each year and you will be able to see the results your team has achieved as an outcome of your strategy!

The Magnavox Odyssey and the Atari Pong were the first home video game consoles marketed in the early seventies. At that time, consoles were analog rather than digital, and they had rather simple graphics, poor controller responsiveness and no sound! 40 years later, tremendous progress has been made and a handful of competitors are engaged in a fierce battle to dominate this market. 

This introduction to the BOSS World covers the main aspects of the current market, the customers, the distribution channels, the existing offerings and the competitors.  At the beginning of each Round there is an additional introduction to provide you with more specific details about that Round.

The simulation starts in Year 40 of the video game console era. The nine years during which you lead the organization – from Year 41 to Year 49 – are organized into four Rounds.  A Round is broadly related to a particular set of learning objectives.  Within a Round you may have one or more years as shown on the chart below:

 

Each round presents you with new strategic challenges:

•   Round “Red”:  Managing your existing offering for 3 years, using Competitive Strategy tools as a basis for your decision making

•   Round “Blue 1”:  Creating a high value (differentiated and low cost) Blue Ocean Strategy product offering, perhaps including competing factors beyond those on which the industry currently competes

•   Round “Blue 2”:  Unlocking further demand by determining the “right” Strategic Price and refining your offering

•   Round “Blue 3”:  Extending your Blue Ocean Strategy by using Service and Delivery platforms as a basis for creating uncontested market space, as well as dealing with the presence of new low-priced competitors.

It will take you and your colleagues about 2 to 3 hours to complete each Round. Hence, the total exercise will last around 10 hours plus pre-reading.

Note: your Instructor may have decided to skip the Red Round, since completing this Round is not mandatory in order to fully understand the Blue Ocean Strategy concepts covered in Blue Rounds one to three.  Similarly, he or she may have decided to combine Round Blue-1 and Round Blue-2, as shown below, to provide you with a more condensed learning experience.