Feliciano Students 1st Place in Global Business Simulation

Three student teams from Montclair State University’s Feliciano School of Business tied for first in the world in the online Business Strategy Game (BSG) during fall 2021 semester – a first for the school.

The Montclair State students were among the 5,200 teams from more than 250 universities in 52 countries competing in the simulation worldwide during the last year.

BSG is an online game in which student teams run fictitious athletic footwear companies in head-to-head competition against each other. Similar to real athletic footwear companies, the simulation firms operate in a global market, selling branded and private-label products across geographic regions, and making some 100 decisions each week for ten weeks over the course of the semester to manage the complexities of production, distribution, marketing, operations, facilities, celebrity endorsements, compensation, training and finance.

“Teams have to develop a strategy and then have to do some deep analytic thinking as to how to execute that strategy and that analytic thinking is one of the main things employers look for,” said Jeffrey J. Monacelli, assistant professor of management, who integrates BSG in his MGMT 439 capstone curriculum.

Teams are measured weekly on five financial and operational measures, such as earnings per share, return on equity, credit rating, image rating and stock price. Based on those results, the top 100 teams worldwide are recognized each week – a distinction Montclair State University has attained most weeks for the past decade, although this was the first time the school enjoyed multiple teams in the top position simultaneously. Only two other Montclair State teams have tied for first place in the world during the last 15 years, Monacelli said.

Heather Reissner, a senior majoring in business administration and a member the 1st place team from Monacelli’s class, said the experiences gave her a deeper understanding of the complexities of running a business and importance of team collaboration.

“It’s all about the big picture,” she said. “We had to work hard individually and also as a team.”

Reissner said the simulation helped bring the curriculum alive, giving her an appreciation for the importance of different stages in production and distribution that she hadn’t considered before.

“This really made these issues more of a reality that I could experience as they played out rather than just reading about it,” she said.

Other students on the teams who tied for #1 in the world include: Kaitly Arcede, Ashley Colon, Julia Maltagliati, Zoe Ziebell, Anthony Arroyo, Jessica Park, Tomas Rivera, Sherri Way, Jakub Mazgaj, Deukkyun Park, Diana Pikalova and Alejandro Pimentel.