Bocconi Ice Cream Empire

Because managing a business is also a game.

We know that many entrepreneurs started with nothing: Thomas Alva Edison sold snacks and sweets on trains; Rockefeller was the son of a street vendor; Steve Jobs, Hewlett & Packard started their empires in a garage. And Ferdinando Bocconi, Università Bocconi’s founder, began by selling fabrics in the countryside outside of Milan before becoming the forerunner of large retailers in Italy with the opening of the Bocconi Brothers department stores (better known today as “La Rinascente”).

In light of these famous examples, Università Bocconi has decided to develop a simulation game which gives anyone who is learning about the world of economics for the first time the chance to experiment with the satisfactions and problems small entrepreneurs face on a daily basis as they manage their businesses.

That’s how ICE – Ice Cream Empire – was born.

Ice Cream Empire helps you learn the rules of the financial market, simulate the running of a business, put your decision-making skills to the test and verify the results of your decisions.

Bocconi ICE is a strategic business simulation game in which you will start and manage a small handmade ice cream business and sell ice cream around the world; Milan, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Moscow, Mumbai, Munich, New York, Paris, Rio De Janeiro, Shanghai, Sydney and Tokyo.

The ice cream entrepreneur’s day starts with a glance at the news (weather forecasts influencing the flow of people to the potential locations) and continues with important strategic decisions. The player chooses the location of the stand, the tools to buy, the employees to hire (you could need a cashier to quicken the queue or a juggler to entertain the clients), whether to spend money on promotion, the recipe of the ice cream (watery and cheap or rich and expensive?), how much stock, often perishable, to buy.

The player strives to control his or her heartbeat while looking at the people walking around his stand, buying or not buying his or her ice cream as a function of the strategic decisions taken before and may decide to modify them in real time changing the settings in the Marketing Mixer.

At the end of each working day, the game presents economic and financial reports showing the results of the day. The following day, the player can change his or her strategies according to the experience gained.

The players can compete with each other, sending their results to Facebook score, which compares them, allowing them to understand how good they are in selling ice cream.

Bocconi Ice Cream Empire: have fun discovering management.