The Mikes Bikes simulation is an exciting and interesting way to gain critical insights into the development of a business. By operating a simulated bicycle manufacturing corporation over a period of ten years was an opportunity to gain insights on a real entrepreneurial experience. It allowed us to expand on the ideas taught in class such as creating a business strategy and using tools like SWOT and Porter’s five forces.
We had many assumptions initially regarding the procedures but gradually we could learn the basics by facing enough challenges and by trial and error method. These skills cannot be learned by the usual form of lecturing.
Considering our team, this was our first comprehensive exposure to real business environment. Each …show more content…
As we were too much concerned about our own goals, we ignored our potential competitors, their plan of action and hence we failed. Analysing this mistake, we realized that in order to be a successful entrepreneur, we must be able to accurately predict the actions of competitors, and apply strategy accordingly.
Perceptual Maps
We did not understand the significance of perceptual maps. We did not realise that we had to continually modify our bikes under different segment in order to be at the center of the perceptual maps . But we were too late to understand this and therefore did not have a chance to get the desired results.
Operational Decision-Making
The operational decisions were really very important for ensuring that our products were efficient enough and could actually satisfy the demands of each market. Increased production efficiency resulted in greater capacity and profits. Also, accurately meeting demand without over producing meant that the optimum numbers of bikes were sold while avoiding costly idle time and inventory storage.
For several rollovers, our idle time kept increasing thus decreasing our