Saturday, August 30, 2008

CEOs and Beer Games

Thursday heralded the end of orientation. It had been a crazy week - 12-14 hours a day of constant activity. The day opened with a session with the CEO who was the protagonist of the case we'd read earlier in the week. He explained more detail on the situation, gave us the low-down of what had gone on after the case had ended, and took our questions. Then he gave us his 6 pieces of advice for running a company - and this is from a guy that ran a multi-billion dollar company - unreal.

We ended orientation by playing the Beer Game, which actually doesn't involve drinking beer. It's ultimately a market-psychological experiment that always repeats itself with similar results, and predicates that ultimately, you will not totally trust the other players, and create an inefficient market. My partner and I came up with a strategy to follow to make sure that her and I wouldn't panic at any moment, and it worked well, but the other teams weren't so fruitful... Fascinating game. I want to play again!

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