This chapter reviews established business analytical tools such as SWOT, PESTEL, the BCG matrix and Porter's five forces, some of which have become dated due to the use of the internet and the emergence of global markets. It suggests that there are many more forces present when seeking to launch and sustain a new business. The SYNERGIE game allows individual trainees or small teams to select a preferred business type (from a pack of blue cards) and consider the elements (threats and opportunities etc.) which might need be considered. In a series of rounds, teams collect ‘issues' from a pack of orange cards, to try to build up a set of the issues they think are most relevant to their chosen businesses. The tutor has access to an electronic matrix which computes the scores for each team. Further rounds can involve the acquisition of several businesses and permit the collection of further cards with issues common to all of those business types, illustrating the concept of synergy.
TopEarlier Models For Business Analysis And The Synergie Concept
The SYNERGIE game suggested below requires participants to match a series of issues with a particular type of business. The links between the issues and the business types have a range of values between zero and three, depending on the relevance of the issue to the business type. Teams of players are challenged, in a number of rounds:
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To identify issues most relevant to a particular business type of their choice
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To identify the most relevant issues, given a business type taken at random
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To build a portfolio of three or more businesses with maximum synergy
There are techniques such as brainstorming, for example Delphi (sharing ideas) and a number of conceptual business models that have been proposed to assist thinking on innovation, start-ups and business development. Where they have relevance to potential game design, some of those are described briefly below, adapted from The Decision Book, Fifty Models for Strategic Thinking, by Mikael Krogerus and Roman TschAppeler (2008): adapted from Ferdian (2016).
SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats)
This kind of analysis helps entrepreneurs to synthesise a potential venture’s current position both from an internal (SW) and external (OT) point of view. It was based on a Stanford University study in the 1960s to help employees involved in a project to improve their understanding of it. The purpose of the SYNERGIE game described below is to confront participants with many specific issues in relation to any type of business idea or potential business. Irrespective of the kind of issue (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity or Threat) it should raise awareness of the issues and their level of importance.