Plunge into the world of virtual business

12:17, June 9, 2021

The IEB students of GSEM has been successfully completed Business Simulation Process

3rd year students of the International Economics and Business programme had a unique opportunity to create their own business and try themselves as a CEO, managing all the key business processes of a virtual company, as part of the International Business course.

Students under the guidance of Yana Lopatkova, co-teacher of the International Business course, were involved in the simulation to build their own international corporation. Students, managing offices, retail stores, warehouses, factories, mines, animal farms, restaurants and other types of units, developed their own market strategies, made decisions within a given time frame, built communications in the open international universe, while constantly monitoring changing market trends.

The four-week business simulation forced students to put into practice multifunctional skills in international economics and business, marketing, financial management and other areas that they studied in this and previous semesters.

The inclusion of a business simulator in the educational process makes it possible to apply theories in practice, develop business skills, reduce the risks of committing typical and fatal business mistakes, and also make it possible to experiment with business models and market strategies in the virtual space.

The winners were determined by the rating of the business simulator. According to the results, the company "MikRom corp." under the direction of Roman Akhmineev and Mikhail Mamykin took 1st place, 2nd place -"TuttiFrutti" (Evgeny Popov), 3rd place - "Rosneftegas" (Nikita Paderin).

The students of the IEB programme shared their impressions:

At the end of April, we were invited to participate in the Simformer business simulator, the purpose of which was to use our knowledge base to create our own virtual business. A distinctive feature of this simulator was the presence of competition not only among our university groups, but also among other global participants in the simulation, which further pushed us to obtain a positive result. Should such simulators be present in the learning process? Certainly. Such simulators allow you to apply the knowledge gained, help you understand how the entire value chain of goods and services works, and plunge into the world of virtual business. And, finally, the main secret of success is hard work and a desire to do a specific job, because it will be almost impossible to develop in what you do not like - commented the winners of the simulator Roman Akhmineev and Mikhail Mamykin (MikRom corp.), 3rd year students

The simulation is very interesting and fun. At first there were doubts about its necessity, but in the end it was very delayed. I would like to play longer. The knowledge gained during the training period was certainly useful, but strategic thinking is also important. It is necessary to calculate actions for several moves - added Anna Mokrushnikova, 3rd year student, CEO of the virtual company HiTech (Top-10)

The International Economics and Business programme of GSEM UrFU expresses its gratitude to Sergey Menshikov, CEO of Simformer, and Denis Zhuravkov, game designer, content manager, for support and coordination!