Every semester students from Concord University participate in a competitive on-line business simulation called Capstone. Capstone simulates the management decision processes in a true-to-life, competitive environment.
The Capstone business simulation is utilized by leading business schools in the U.S. and around the world. CapSim tracks the performance of participants through eight rounds of competition using a balanced scorecard, and reports on the companies with balanced scorecard results that are in the top ten percent of all simulated companies that have participated in the simulation in the last six months.
The Strategic Management class at Concord University placed eight students, 40% of the Fall 2016 class, in this Top Ten list. In fact all eight students finished in the top 5% overall across the eight rounds. Those students are: Patrick Cadle, Ethan Richardson, Coleman Osborne, Amber Cordill, Dominick D’Angelo, Gretchen Reese, Jon Sedgwick and Daniel Gonzales.
Concord will be hosting a brief award ceremony for these outstanding students on Monday, Nov. 28 from 2:30 p.m. – 3 p.m., in Room 103 of the Nick Rahall Technology Center. The ceremony is open to the public.
Concord requires participation in the simulation as part of the business program capstone experience for students nearing graduation. Each Concord student assumes the role of CEO of a simulated company. Each company competes for sales, profits and market share while participants learn to read and understand financial statements, allocate resources and balance competing demands.
Participants in a Capstone business simulation are faced with strategic decision making in a complex competitive marketplace. With five market segments and up to eight products to manage there is a challenging matrix of data and competitive variables. The experience emulates real-world challenges that corporate managers face every day.
Some of the regional schools that competed in this cohort include Marshall University, University of North Carolina, Duke, Wake Forest, Ohio State, Penn State, University of Tennessee and Virginia Commonwealth University. Some of the more notable top 50 programs that competed in this cohort include Georgia Tech, Cornell, Notre Dame, and the Universities of California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin to name a few. Many of these programs never placed a team in the top 10 percent in any round, and only a handful placed teams in the top 10 percent overall across the eight rounds.
