Students on the Innovation Management Course, taught by Professor Paulo Figueiredo at FGV?s Brazilian School of Public and Business Administration?s Undergraduate Administration Program, participated, on April 2, in Harvard Business School?s Strategic Innovation Simulation. In the simulation, students are placed in the positions of Presidents at Back Bay Battery, a company in the battery industry, whose global market handles about 40 billion dollars annually.

During the exercise, the students managed a dilemma increasingly faced by corporate executives: remain in the core business, comfortable and profitable, or migrate to a new technology that represents disruptive innovation and promises more sales and profits, but involves uncertainties and long-term investments in research and development (R&D). They had the opportunity to combine innovation theory with the practice of corporate decisions involving several variables related to innovation management.

Romain Etay, exchange student at Sciences Po Paris, and Luis Felipe Kronfeld, student in the 7th semester, chose the best strategies and were ranked in 1^st and 2^nd place, respectively. Both took home a trophy for their successful simulation. For Romain, the experience provided a reliable sense of how the business environment works:

The simulators make students approach reality, which is very important for anyone who wants to know how the business environment works. The decisions have to be made quickly, which may result in losses as well, he explained, who went for the strategy based on price and R&D.

Luis Felipe, on the other hand, attributed the excess of market information and the need for quick choices as his greatest difficulty in the simulation. The executive is attacked by information, but only some pieces are relevant to the business. There are many variables to choose from. This is very interesting and at the same time stressful, he said.