Question: After you have read the Participant's Guide or Player's Manual for the strategy simulation exercise that you will participate in this academic term, you and your co-managers should come up with brief one- or two-paragraph answers to the questions that follow before entering your first set of decisions. While your answers to the first of the four questions can be developed from your reading of the manual, the remaining questions will require a collaborative discussion among the members of your company's management team about how you intend to manage the company you have been assigned to run.

1. What is your company's current situation? A substantive answer to this question should cover the following issues:

• Does your company appear to be in sound financial condition?

• What problems does your company have that need to be addressed?

2. Why will your company matter to customers? A complete answer to this question should say something about each of the following:

• How will you create customer value?

• What will be distinctive about the company's products or services?

• How will capabilities and resources be deployed to deliver customer value?

3. What are the primary elements of your company's business model?

• Describe your customer value proposition.

• Discuss the profit formula tied to your business model.

• What level of revenues is required for your company's business model to become a moneymaker?

4. How will you build and sustain competitive advantage?

• Which of the basic strategic and competitive approaches discussed in this chapter do you think makes the most sense to pursue?

• What kind of competitive advantage over rivals will you try to achieve?

• How do you envision that your strategy might evolve as you react to the competitive moves of rival firms?

• Does your strategy have the ability to pass the three tests of a winning strategy?