BUILDING BETTER BUSINESS PEOPLE
WITH THE
CAPSTONE^® BUSINESS SIMULATION

Our programs are designed for anyone whose work impacts or should impact your company’s bottom line and who would benefit from a more solid base of business knowledge and understanding.

High potential employees are ideal candidates, as well as successful professionals who have excelled in their specialized discipline- engineering, HR, IT, R&D, sales, HR, manufacturing, supply chain – and are assuming expanded management responsibilities. The training equips your decision makers with critical business skills that might otherwise take years to develop. It can also be an excellent refresher, and often a valuable eye-opener, for experienced managers, even if they already have advanced business degrees.

• Enhanced Business Acumen
• Improved market-based decision making skills
• Clearer understanding of the company’s strategy
• Better alignment of strategies and implementation
• Effective and applicable understanding of how various functional decisions effect the numbers
• Enhanced financial literacy
• Improved cross-functional collaboration and teamwork
• Improved problem-solving based on customer needs, competitor information and company data

Simulations train pilots, soldiers, logisticians and doctors — professions where learning is vital and mistakes can cost lives and big money.

But mistakes during simulations result in valuable teaching moments – with no harm done. We now see a dramatic increase in the use of human capital development simulations. The understanding and study of business is well suited to simulations. While business mistakes rarely cost lives, they can cost livelihoods.

• Hands-on experience teaches better and faster
• Lessons anchor in mind and emotions
• Dry financial data comes to life
• Experiential learning moves people out of their comfort zone to stimulate fresh thinking
• Simulation breathes life into a sometimes arid topics
• Learners see, experience and drive the live linkages between business functions, decisions and results
• Learner love interactive, realistic problem solving exercises

Are you pondering over some of the questions below? If you are, our simulation programs will jump start the learning process:

• Do our people demonstrate an understanding of how every one of their decisions affects their company’s metrics?
• When making decisions do our people actively consider the potential impact on other parts of the organization?
• Do our people actively consider the financial implications of their decisions?
• Do our people demonstrate an understanding of what they can do to accelerate the execution of their company’s strategies?
• Do our people demonstrate an ability to synthesize information about your Customers, your Competitors, and your own Company?
• Do our people think and act in a holistic manner?
• Do our people make decisions that are 90% of the time effective in contributing towards the growth objectives of the company?

• A clear understanding of how the business actually ​makes money
• Enhanced business acumen and commercial sense.
• A better understanding of the company’s strategy
• Enhanced market based decision making skills
• Spot, interpret and monetize business opportunities
• Understanding and using Business Essentials:
  • What is my company’s strategy? Why? Is it effective? What are the risks?
  • Growth, Margins and Profits
  • Business Velocities and Cash Flows
  • Customer buying criteria
  • Business Finance: comfort with numbers
  • Cross functional alignment – how do the functional pieces of a business fit together and work in unison for a thriving integrated business

Our programs would always cover the core essentials of a business. However, we could provide emphasis and tailor areas to your primary learning areas and objectives to meet the unique needs of your organization. To assure maximum impact, training is scheduled at a site of your choosing, exclusively for your own group. Some common themes / areas of emphases are revenue, profits, strategy, finance, cross functional alignment to name a few.

Given the need for today’s top managers to possess broad expertise that spans business disciplines, our programs enable executives to quickly expand their knowledge base across all core functional areas through the program’s integrated core curriculum. The rich scope and depth of our programs and the wide range of functional and industry discussions also provide exposure to valuable new perspectives on management.

Most senior executives do not have the time to constantly refresh their core managerial skills with the latest academic research and best practices. Even if they already have an MBA or related business degree, many executives are still relying on skills and principles learned years ago to manage in a business environment that changes dramatically every year. Our programs enables executives to quickly update and extend core management skills that apply directly to today’s global, highly competitive, and dynamic business landscape.

The program enables participants to conceive, create, and iterate a road map for their businesses. As a result, participants return to their organization with both a plan and the tools to drive results.

While making participants apply and learn from general management principles, our programs emphasize strategy and market leadership. The programs compellingly highlight the strategic impact of each core functional area of business and strategic leadership in the global economy. This focus enables executives who have devoted much of their careers to internally or operationally focused roles to step back, expand their perspectives, and identify breakthrough insights that will drive their organization’s future success.

Because teams actually engage in decision-making they acquire the knowledge and skills very quickly and are able to apply the learning to their jobs very fast. It is applied learning through self-discovery at its best! To help you achieve your business growth objectives and learning objectives, we work closely with you to understand your desired outcomes so that we can select the most appropriate simulation and emphasize the right aspects and topics of the simulation during the facilitated program.

Our simulations cut across business functions and teams have the opportunity to discuss and analyze business issues which have to be addressed in a functionally integrated manner.

Deriving from the desired outcomes above, the Capstone Business Simulation learning environment, is:

• Highly interactive
• Is team-based
• Treats learning as a cycle
• Builds incrementally upon each insight
• Allows time for reflection, consolidation and internalization
• Embraces mistakes as a tool for learning
• Provides the big picture and an opportunity to connect the dots
• Nurtures new mental models

Many businesses believe their business is unique. When it comes to training, they make what seems a logical leap to the assumption that to train their people, they need a simulation that mirrors their industry. There is a flaw in the assumption. When managers’ minds are constrained within the boundaries of the issues they deal with day after day through a custom-made simulation, two things happen: first, they begin to critique the model and find reasons why it is not an exact reflection of their industry and second, they are not motivated to think out of the box.

Capsim® uses Foundation® and Capstone Business Simulation to train people in aerospace, pharmaceuticals, retail, automotive, white goods, medical devices, consumer electronics, investment banking, insurance, electricity generation, semi-conductors, software, telecommunications, oil & gas, diesel engines, earth moving equipment and other industries. The simulations give participants a completely new business model within which they can take risks, explore options, think in new ways and – most importantly – discuss how their new insights can be applied to their own jobs.

Custom simulations are valuable in teaching specific skill sets for specific tasks. However, years of experience demonstrates that to train managers in strategic skills or overall business acumen, an evolved simulation is the better choice.

Consider these reasons for choosing Capstone Business Simulation or Foundation® to boost learning potential for business simulation-based seminars:

• A custom simulation is written to reflect a specific company’s beliefs or industry’s norms. It closes participants’ minds because they inevitably begin to think, “does this simulation really reflect our company’s experience?” It also may leave participants with the impression that they know everything they need to know, when the greatest threat to a manager or executive is the things they don’t yet know that they don’t know!
• An evolved simulation is not constrained by existing market realities so it can expose managers to other aspects of business. It takes their thinking into unfamiliar realms and generates better, more creative business thinking.
• An evolved simulation has been scrutinized and shaped by ideas drawn from hundreds of business school professors, managers and executives, and hundreds of thousands of participants.
• An evolved simulation is supported by a skilled staff that can assist trainers and participants alike. No question can be posed they cannot answer. No problem can emerge that they cannot solve.
• If a custom simulation were as rich and robust as Capstone Business Simulation or Foundation®, it would require significant server space. Capstone Business Simulation and Foundation® are online and require no space.
• Buyers can test an evolved simulation in advance. A custom simulation is paid for first, on a take-it-or-leave-it basis.

The Capsim® evolved simulations are used by companies in a wide range of industries, from heavy equipment manufacturers, pharmaceuticals and IT designers and manufacturers to insurance companies and retailers.