BigPicture: An Analytical Platform for Business War Gaming

Abstract

Business war games are strategic management exercises that bring the military scenario simulation to a commercial setting, helping business managers to better understand the environment in which they operate and anticipate scenarios, such as competition movements, new product launching and production capacity planning, among others. These exercises normally take place with players organized in teams, gathered in a room, with a static package of information provided beforehand. In this paper we present an alternative, dynamic way of playing a business war game, with players geographically dispersed, and information dynamically available as it is available from its sources. We introduce BigPicture, an analytical platform with unique features that allow it to be an ideal “playground” for conducting more realistic business war games.