Strategic Business Game
For a global pharmaceutical organization, I developed a multi-round, gamified business simulation, designed to prepare emerging leaders for a high-stakes, facilitator-led strategy workshop.
Participants step into the role of General Manager and must allocate a €50M budget across six business functions.
Their decisions are evaluated in real time, generating dynamic feedback on risk, balance, and strategic focus.
Through this interactive experience, learners confront the reality of trade-offs, limited resources, and long-term impact,
for both the business and the patients it serves.
Built For
This experience was developed for a global pharmaceutical organization.
The target audience consisted of:
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Emerging leaders
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Cross-functional high-potential employees
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Participants preparing for a live strategy simulation
The digital game is used as pre-work to ensure that all participants arrive at the workshop with a realistic understanding of strategic complexity.
Project Details
- Role: e-Learning Developer and Instructional Designer
- Focus: Decision simulation
Tools
- Articulate Storyline
- Vyond
Skills
- e-Learning Development
- Instructional Design
- Animated video
- Gamification
- JavaScript integration
💡My Approach
Instead of presenting strategy as theory, I designed this experience to let learners practice decisions first.
My goal was to:
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Create tension without real-world risk
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Let learners feel the impact of trade-offs
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Use feedback as a learning moment, not a score
By structuring the experience in rounds with limited attempts, the game mirrors real business pressure while remaining safe to explore.
🔧The Build
The game unfolds over three rounds, each allowing two attempts. After submitting their allocation, learners receive dynamic feedback that evaluates the balance, focus, and risk level of their decisions. Short scenario videos between rounds help frame the business context and maintain narrative momentum, while the repeated round structure gives learners space to test choices, reflect, and continue. The animated videos were created in Vyond, while the strategic budget game itself was built in Articulate Storyline.
Behind the scenes, the simulation is powered by a custom decision engine rather than a traditional branching scenario. Budget allocations are calculated live, and feedback is generated dynamically through combinations of variables that interpret the learner’s choices. The system tracks attempts, progress, and success for each round, and learners receive different outcomes depending on how they distribute their resources. By evaluating more than twenty decision patterns, the game adapts the learning experience in real time, creating a responsive environment that mirrors the complexity of real strategic decision-making.
✅The Result
The simulation is currently used as preparation for a live, facilitator-led strategy workshop. Participants complete the game beforehand, arriving with a shared experience of making strategic trade-offs and allocating limited resources. It helps create a common decision framework and sets the stage for deeper, more focused discussions during the workshop.