Level 4 (subscribers) – Automotive
(Stay a Leader)
The ranking of the best players and the scores to beat, right here:
You have played the first sessions in very different worlds (Internet, bakeries, food distribution) but with some similarities: they were service industries with competitors of similar size. You survived this fierce competition? Congratulations!
We now move on to a new economic sector.
This is an industrial landscape, that of a very large global industry, automobiles. There is now a product dimension. The geographic dimension still holds importance as not all continents show the same developments.
Moreover, this industry with a mechanical culture is undergoing a transformation where electric engines are taking a significant share compared to traditional combustion engines. The share of electric vehicles is still small but rapidly growing and it is not excluded that in the long term it will occupy at least half of the industry. Don’t forget Chapter 4, especially the one on segmentation in the automotive sector and the one on life cycles!
The landscape is a mixed geographical and technological one, with:
- Three major zones: Europe in the broad sense, the Americas, and Asia encompassing the rest of the world for simplicity.
- Two technologies: vehicles with combustion engines and vehicles with electric (or hybrid) engines.
Crossing the two creates six strategic segments.
Stay a Leader – initial assets of the five competitors(companies and fictional data)
The game is more complex than the bakery one because there are now five competitors instead of three. You will play the role of Noret, one of the four industry leaders. At the beginning of the game, four players have roughly the same global volumes: one American, one Japanese, two Europeans including your company. The fifth player, Latesun, is only present at the start of the game in electric engines.
To finance your new investments, you can rely on your self-financing capacity and the leverage of debt. You can also divest from some segments to invest in others.
As in real life, you will need to monitor overcapacity and undercapacity in the industry. Of course, the fundamental element explaining profitability is market share, but when there is very high overcapacity, profitability is affected downward (the symmetry being true in case of undercapacity); you will need to monitor the situation closely by looking at the graphs where you will find all the data.
Stay a Leader – board of directors of Noret(companies and fictional data)
The strategy for you is to maintain your market shares in traditional technological segments while at the same time taking a significant share in the new segments of electric vehicles. This is the condition to survive and thrive in the long term.
Your turn to play!
To start a new game:
. If you are on a computer: Click here
. If you are on a smartphone or tablet, download the “Strathena” mobile app on Google Play or the App Store.
