This April, ASU business students will have a lot of pressure to keep a winning tradition alive.
Four business students won top honors in a worldwide online business simulation game late last semester — the second semester in a row for ASU students.
Recent global management graduates Rebekah Benedict-Yonder, Mike Drigants, Ryan Mengel and global management senior Jessica Archuleta earned "Grand Champion" status in the Business Strategy Game in last semester's competition.
ASU has competed in the game, which featured 111 universities from 12 different countries, for the past eight years, said Kathy Anders, an ASU professor.
Anders achieved BSG "Master Professor" status by coaching two winning teams: December's shoe business "IUZ shoes" and last semester's "Killaz," the team that won the game in April 2007. The game is held in December and April each year.
The December contest had teams run mock shoe businesses for a two-week period.
The teams started out with a company in North America and Asia, Mengel said.
"We had to develop ourselves as a cost leader, so nobody could come close to us," he said. "You could diversify your product image with high-priced shoes like Gucci. We diversified our image with middle-of-the-line products like Nike shoes to become cost leaders."
To play in the international game, the students had to win a classroom version, which they played in their global management course at ASU's West campus, Mengel said.
"The international game was a lot harder," Mengel said.
International players included fellow undergraduates and even master's students from other universities, Mengel added.
Drigants, who will start law school in the fall, said the international competition caused him to put himself in other people's shoes.
"The majority of the game was based on a spreadsheet," Drigants said. "You place out a bid and set an order. If I charged too much, I wouldn't sell any shoes or make any money."
Drigants was known as the "numbers guy" throughout the competition by fellow teammates and set up the general strategy for the team.
The simulation was administered through the classroom by the faculty, but the online game allowed students to apply what they learned in the classroom into action.
"It puts decision making in a social context," Anders said. "They make the decisions in teams, and they have to integrate all of the different functions of business."
Drigants liked that the competition was online because it allowed him to participate in the competition at his convenience, he said.
"I was at a computer programming conference in Las Vegas for the initial part of it," Drigants said. "I remember doing it really late at night or really early in the morning before conference meetings."
Drigants said he enjoyed the game's competitive nature and put in six to eight hours a day on the competition.
The game allowed the students to compare themselves to other students around the world and to the students' work ethics, Anders said.
"We are lucky to have some really bright students," Anders said. "We really have some super students that are amazing, wonderful, capable and sharp."
Reach the reporter at: ryan.calhoun@asu.edu.
