Capsim business simulations · Beginner
CapsimCore Business Simulation
Capsim's most flexible simulation. At its lightest, a forgiving, competitive backdrop that starts in twenty minutes. At full configuration, a complete business fundamentals course with the same reports and modules as Capstone.
Five-minute walkthrough of the starting scenario. Instructor and student support is included, and your first delivery is shadowed by a Capsim consultant.
On this pageWhere it fitsScenarioDecisionsObjectivesCompareFormatsScoringFAQ
- Level
- Beginner, scaling to intermediate
- Market
- 2 segments: Low Tech, High Tech
- Products
- 1 to start, up to 4
- Rounds
- 2–8 competition rounds (+ practice); each round is one year
- Round length
- 30–60 minutes at its lightest; 60–150 in full configuration; a week in a course
- Onboarding
- About 20 minutes light; about an hour in full configuration
- Teams
- Solo to large cohorts; 4–6 per company typical
- Scoring
- Stars · Success Measures · Balanced Scorecard
- Best for
- Intro to business, strategy fundamentals, non-business programs, workshops
Where it fits
A first business course, a functional course, or the backdrop for something else.
In the curriculum
CapsimCore is the fundamentals simulation, and the most configurable one Capsim makes. Run it light and it is a forgiving, competitive backdrop that starts in twenty minutes. Run it full, with proforma reports, HR and TQM, and the case modules switched on, and it carries an introductory business course or a strategy fundamentals course with real analytical depth, in about three-quarters of Capstone's time. Paired with Intro to Business: A Primer, it carries the whole course.
- Introductory business and strategy fundamentals
- Business for engineering, law, health, and other non-business programs
- Functional courses that need the whole-company view (accounting, HR, marketing)
- A refresher that pulls the curriculum together before a Comp-XM exam
In corporate programs
Workshops and events. CapsimCore runs in as little as four hours as the backdrop for a leadership or team-building session, or across a day or two as a business-acumen seminar for managers who never took a business course. Onboarding takes about twenty minutes, so a room is making decisions inside the first half hour. Instructors can simplify one function to a single policy call (aggressive, balanced, or conservative) so the session stays on the behavior rather than the spreadsheet.
The scenario
The same company as Capstone, earlier in its life.
A government has broken up a monopoly into identical companies. Each team takes one. The company looks healthy on paper, but the monopoly hid its problems: a product that pleases no one in particular, capacity in the wrong place, a capital structure nobody chose on purpose. Teams fix what's broken while building an advantage the other teams can't easily match.
The product is a sensor. Deliberately generic, so no team arrives with an industry playbook. Customers judge it on positioning, price, reliability, and age of design, and each segment weights those differently.
Two segments on the map. CapsimCore is set earlier in the industry's life than Capstone, when the market has only two segments, Low Tech and High Tech, and each company has one product sitting in the overlap between them, pleasing neither. The ideal spot in each segment moves every year toward smaller and faster, so the first decision every team faces is whether to chase one segment, both, or invent a second product.
Five generic strategies are laid out at the start: Broad Differentiator, Broad Cost Leader, Niche Differentiator, Niche Cost Leader, and Product Life Cycle. Any of them can win.
Three forces make standing still a decision too.
- Competition. Every company starts with the same flaws, and the team that fixes them first pulls ahead.
- Industry growth. Segments grow at different rates, so capacity has to be bought before the demand arrives.
- Changing technology. Customers expect smaller, more capable products every year. A product left alone drifts out of its segment.
What teams decide
The decisions, function by function.
The same four functions as every Capsim simulation, and the same rule: what marketing promises, production has to build and finance has to pay for. Instructors who want a lighter session can automate one function to a single policy decision.
Reposition, revise, invent
Move the product toward a segment's ideal spot, raise reliability, or invent a second product for the other segment.
Price, promote, sell, forecast
Set price, promotion budget (awareness), sales budget (accessibility), and the forecast the company plans against.
Capacity, automation, schedule
Buy capacity before the demand arrives, invest in automation, schedule production against the forecast.
Fund it all
Issue stock, bonds, and short-term debt; pay dividends; keep enough cash to avoid an emergency loan.
Modules that raise the stakes. R&D is built in. HR and TQM are optional departments, and the full set of case modules is available: Community Involvement, Technology Licensing, Management Consulting, Internet of Things, Global Initiative, Local Suppliers, and Basic & Applied R&D. Going the other way, instructors can simplify one function (R&D, marketing, production, or finance) to a single policy call, aggressive, balanced, or conservative, and let the simulation make the detailed decisions. The nine add-in modules →
Learning objectives
What students can do when they've run it.
Configured light, the first five are the point. Configured full, CapsimCore carries the same objectives as Capstone, so it can anchor a full course as well as a workshop.
- The connected company. Explain how marketing, production, and finance depend on each other, from the experience of running all three.
- Decisions and trade-offs. Recognize the key decisions in each function and the trade-offs inside them.
- Concepts to outcomes. Connect the concepts from the course to the results the company posts each round.
- Competition, positioning, forecasting. See how a competitor's move, a product's position, and a forecast shape what happens next.
- Reflect, iterate, analyze. Learn from a round's results, revise the plan, and run the scenario again.
- Strategic analysis. Assess the company and its industry with frameworks such as SWOT, PESTEL, and Porter's Five Forces.
- Business planning. Commit to a strategy: market position, source of competitive advantage, and where growth will come from.
- Cross-functional decision making. Make the calls in every function so that they add up to one strategy, for this round and the ones after it.
- Performance measures. Choose the indicators and targets that will tell the team whether the strategy is working.
- Implementation and execution. Turn a strategy into a sequence of funded decisions, and keep executing as competitors respond.
- Project management. Plan investments that take rounds to pay back, across functions, without running out of cash.
- Team development. Work through the stages of a team under deadline pressure, and lead through them.
- Change management. Redirect a company mid-course when the market or a module makes the plan obsolete.
- Communication with stakeholders. Present the company's mission, strategy, results, and decisions to a board, a class, or a client, in writing and in person.
- Assurance-of-learning prework. Refresh and integrate the whole curriculum before an accreditation exam such as Comp-XM.
How it compares
How the four simulations differ.
Every Capsim business simulation runs on the same platform: the same round cycle, the same reports, the same cross-functional decisions. Learn to run one and you can run them all. They differ in how much market there is to read and where the pressure lands.
| Simulation | Level | Segments | Products | Global markets | Scoring | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CapsimCoreThis pageFoundational, fully cross-functional | Beginner | 2 | 1–4 | No | Stars, Success Measures, Balanced Scorecard | Strategy fundamentals |
| CapsimGlobalA domestic company goes multinational | Intermediate | 2 | 1–4 | Yes | Stars, Success Measures | International strategy |
| CapsimOpsOperations in the spotlight | Advanced | 2 | 1–4 | No | Stars, Success Measures | Operations management |
| CapstoneMost usedThe comprehensive flagship, Capsim's most-used simulation | Advanced | 5 | 5–8 | No | Stars, Success Measures, Balanced Scorecard, Triple-Bottom-Line mode | Advanced strategy & capstone |
Choose CapsimCore when the audience is new to business, time is short, or the simulation is the backdrop for something else. It shares Capstone's controls and reports, so a program can start students here and move them up later. A strategy course at full depth points to Capstone, an international course to CapsimGlobal, an operations course to CapsimOps.
Formats and pacing
Formats, and how long each one runs.
At its lightest, CapsimCore onboards in twenty minutes and runs a round in thirty to sixty; that's what makes a four-hour workshop possible. In full configuration it paces like a business-acumen course, about three-quarters of Capstone's time overall.
| Format | Length | Rounds | Typical use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Half-day workshop | 4 hours | 2 | Behavioral or team workshop with the simulation as backdrop |
| One-day seminar | 1 day | Practice + 4 | Business-acumen seminar, conference, or orientation |
| Two-day seminar | 2 days | Practice + 5 | Corporate business-acumen or leadership cohort |
| Semester course | 13 weeks | Up to 4 practice + 8 | Intro to business, strategy fundamentals, interdisciplinary courses |
Onsite, online, or blended, and any class size from a single team to more than a thousand participants across sections. Sizing, coaching setups, and technical requirements: how a delivery runs →
How it's scored
The simulation scores the company. Comp-XM scores the student.
Company performance
Stars give a quick read each round. Success Measures let each team weight the measures that fit its strategy and be scored on its own terms. The Balanced Scorecard scores financial, customer, internal process, and learning-and-growth results, round by round and cumulatively, the same scorecard used in Capstone.
Every round ends with automated debriefs and reports; a custom report builder lets you grade participation as well as results.
Individual evidence, for assurance of learning
Teams share a score, so team results can't stand in for each student's learning. Comp-XM closes that gap: each student runs the same simulation again on their own, then answers the board's questions, scored against the Big 7 learning goals. Four to six hours, individually. CapsimInbox-XM is the faster alternative: students interpret their company's report through a board-meeting inbox in one to two hours.
How Capsim measures the individual →You're never running it alone
What comes with the simulation.
Questions faculty ask
Frequently asked
How fast can a session start?
About twenty minutes in the light configuration. With workspaces set up in advance, an instructor can introduce the scenario, demonstrate a round, and have teams making decisions inside the first half hour. In full configuration, plan on about an hour of self-paced onboarding.
Will it work for students who aren't business majors?
That's one of its main uses. Engineering, law, and health programs run CapsimCore to give students a working model of a business without the vocabulary barrier, and instructors can simplify one function to a single policy decision to keep the focus where the course needs it.
Can it carry a full course?
Yes. Paired with Intro to Business: A Primer, with proforma reports and the cross-functional and case modules switched on, CapsimCore runs a full term with the same analytical depth as the larger simulations.
Solo or teams?
Either. Teams of four to six are typical; solo play works for experienced students and for large events run as a footrace against automated competitors.
How is it graded?
Stars and Success Measures score the company every round, and the Balanced Scorecard adds a cumulative recap. For individual grades, pair the team result with Comp-XM or CapsimInbox-XM.
Playing CapsimCore in your course?
Log in to your simulation, get help from support, or see whether your team qualifies for the Capsim Challenge.
See CapsimCore in your course.
A 30-minute demo, mapped to your syllabus or program. We'll show the round cycle, the reports, and how it's scored.