2019-20

Aaron and Dylan's team, H and A Co., placed in the top 10 in the 2019 MikesBikes World Champs Competition! A total of 97 teams participated in the 2019 MikesBikes World Champs Competition, representing 55 different universities.   We asked them few a questions about the competition and their experience. 

How do you go from Mike's Bikes simulation in BUSN 70 to entering WW competition?

Going from the Mike’s Bikes simulation in BUSN 70 to entering the WW competition takes a lot of trial and error as there are many new features to figure out. Attention to detail is much more important because of the variety of different decisions that can end up affecting your businesses' shareholder value. If my suitemate and I forgot to change a value or account for mistakes made in the previous rollover, it could hurt our business much more than in the BUSN 70 simulation. There is also a double rollover added at the end of the WW competition which means the competitors must account for two consecutive rollovers in a row. This makes our choices extremely important as they had to be sustainable for two rollovers in a row, something that is not seen in the BUSN 70 simulation. 

What did you learn from the competition? What were your take-aways for running your own company in the future?

Aaron: What I learned from the competition was that you are constantly learning new things throughout competition in business. I think this applies to real world business because there are new ideas you come up with along the way that may change the course of your business and the direction of your company.

Dylan: Although we learned a great deal about the basics of forecasting, production, and marketing, I’d say the most important lesson was creating innovative ways to stay ahead of the competition year after year. Attention to detail was incredibly important, as each small mistake cost us in the long run. Using assets efficiently, limiting inventory, and reducing expenses were key takeaways for the future. 

What was the most challenging part of the competition, what strategy did you use?  How did you come up with your strategy?

Aaron: The most challenging part of the competition was predicting how many bikes to produce because underproducing left us making a lot less revenue than our competitors, but if we overproduced, we would have to spend a lot of money on storing the excess bikes. Our strategy was to try to meet the consumer index as perfectly as we possibly could, but the problem we ran into there was that we realized how important the consumer index is too late.

Dylan:  The most challenging part of the competition was maintaining market share while trying to cut costs. To work against this, optimizing our resources through proper allocation was key to our strategy. The basis of our strategy was formed by what we learned through the class competition.

What advice would you give to students that want to do well in Mikes Bikes competition?

Aaron:  The advice I would give to students who want to do well in the Mikes Bikes competition is that you should read the manual whenever you don’t understand something because chances are, they explain it in the manual. I would also say that consumer index is more important than I initially thought, and you should try to match each specific bike’s consumer index as closely as possible.

Dylan:  Start early. I started playing around with the simulation when I first got access, before my teacher assigned anything. Rollover and rollback in the single player version until you understand how each aspect of the simulation affects shareholder value. Analyze the income statement carefully.

Anything else you want to share about the competition?

Aaron:  I’d recommend entering the competition with a friend because you are able to bounce ideas off of each other and work together, which made my experience much more enjoyable.

Dylan:  Overproducing in the first two years put our company in a difficult situation, forcing us to play catch-up for the rest of the competition. Although we did not get our desired outcome, competing with high stakes and time restrictions gave us an idea of what it is like to run a successful company in the real world.