Business Simulation Environment: A Case Study for Business Schools and Startup Accelerators

The aim of this study was to develop business simulation environment to help evaluate future businesses performance using system dynamics approach. The business dynamics simulator for entrepreneurship helps in: (a) designing 5- years pro-forma financial statements for the creation of business plans, (b) simulating strategic decisions to improve survival rate and support growth, (c) producing analysis of performance and business valuation, (D) fostering entrepreneurial education, training & research, in risk-free, enjoyable, realistic and interactive simulation environment. The functionality and usability of business dynamics simulator was tested and evaluated on 40 business school students and 20 students of Founder Institute - world's largest entrepreneur training and startup acceleration program. We found both students see the simulation of their future businesses useful to check if the business will be profitable and cash breakeven but they can see many uncertainties, such as market prices, in the simulation and they still prefer excel spreadsheets to make simple financial evaluations.