30 March 2019

On 30 Mar 2019, HSUHK, Hong Kong Shue Yan University, and Hong Kong’s Chu Hai College of Higher Education, jointly hosted the Business Strategy Game (BSG) Competition for undergraduate students on HSUHK campus. The BSG Competition was the highlight of the pioneering project “A Visual Platform for the Design, Implementation, and Analysis of Collaborative Business Simulation Games” which aims to develop a visual platform for flexibly customised collaborative business simulation games that helps enhance the learning experience and teaching quality.

About 30 teams have registered for the Game Competition, and twelve of them entered the final round. With the coffee industry as the background of the Competition, students were challenged to select the right market segment, allocate the resources on research and development, choose the best available suppliers, and set the marketing strategic mix. Unanticipated in-game events would happen during game play, and the decisions made by any teams could affect the results of the others; hence all teams needed to adjust their strategy deployment quickly and carefully in each round.

The Competition kicked off at 10 am with an opening speech by Dr Collin Wong, The Abizgame’s Project Leader and Associate Dean (External) of School of Decision Sciences of HSUHK, followed by a short briefing section and before-game Q&As hosted by Mr Jeremy Chu, the Abizgame’s Project Manager. The participants were then given warm-up time to get themselves familiar with the game-platform-environment. Afterwards, the intensive BSG Competition started sharp at 11 am.

The Competition had eight rounds and lasted for about five hours. Teams needed to make numerous business decisions within a given time-limit in each round or they would be penalised. The Competition ended at around 4 pm, and the results were calculated and announced immediately at the awards presentation ceremony. Before the awards presentation, a short debriefing of the teams’ performance was hosted by Mr Jeremy Chu, where he categorised several common mistakes the teams made during early rounds of the game, and explained how the leading teams responded and overcame the errors. The champion went to “Coffeeholics” team from CUHK, who was granted HK$10,000 cash coupon. The 1st runner-up was “Sunny Summer” team from CUHK, and the 2nd runner-up was “Innovator” team from CityU.

The winning teams thought that the game was challenging, in which they had to apply comprehensive knowledge learned from different courses to plan for their in-game-actions. Although the game was only a simulation, it gave them a good chance to experience what it was like to run a business and see the consequences of each decision made. Also, any careless errors or mistakes would lead to million-dollar loss of the company, which alerted them the importance to stay conscious in any business communication. Mr Jeremy Chu responded, “This is why simulation game is important! It can be very helpful in educational and professional training by placing the learners in a safe environment to experience the consequences of various decision made in a complex setting.”

Guest speaker at the ceremony, Mr Barry Yuen, Founder & Chairman of COFFEE Academy & Speciality COFFEE Association of Hong Kong, China, praised the Abizgame Team for creating such a meaningful event, and said this might be the first coffee business strategy game competition ever hosted in the world. Furthermore, he shared with the participants about the importance of coffee trade in today’s economy.