The virtual enterprise challenge: Would you like to manage your own cosmetics company?

The art of enterprise is the modern art of war. There is the duel of minds and unending battle for supremacy.
Everything must be carefully decided and executed. Everything follows a plan. And everything must be hidden from the competition. Donald Trump and Oprah would know all this, as would everyone else in the Fortune 500 list. They have been players in this game for as long as they can remember and more, they have been winners. You think you’ve got what it takes to join their ranks? Take to the playing field and find out.

No, you don’t need millions to get started. And no, you don’t need a multi-million dollar idea either. Just this time, you can pretend the company has already been established. You’ve also got your goods and your competition means business. Would you run the show or run away? This is the question that the L’Oreal e-Strat Challenge poses to any young, able and willing enterpriser.

One of the leading cosmetics companies today, L’Oreal has come up with a virtual challenge that will spur the spirit of enterprise among the youth.

Since its start in 2000, over 93,000 students from 2,190 schools have participated in L’Oreal’s e-Strat Challenge. Among them were national champions Kit Enriquez and Brian Tee of Team Back2Basics from Ateneo University and first runner-up Karen Kwok of Team SurrealSynergy, also from Ateneo. All of them can attest to the challenge’s dynamic ways.

Says Kit Enriquez, "It’s great to experience first-hand the dynamics of managing a cosmetics company. Because of the simulation, we were able to test and apply the managerial, marketing, and strategic concepts that we learned in the classroom. We would excitedly wait for the reaction of the market and our competitors to the decisions we made every period. It was great when the results were favorable to our virtual company. It meant that we were doing things correctly."

Brian Tee declares, "For me, the best part was facing and living up to the challenge of the game. After the results from every round, you got to know whether your decisions paid off or not. With this, you had to be ready to adapt to the results and realign your strategies quickly. The concept of having to be dynamic made the game all the more exciting."

Karen Kwok asserts, "You learn new things, which are more hands-on than mere lectures in school. Also, there’s the relationship you form with your group mates. You learn how to adjust to become not three different individuals but one team."

Essentially, it is a game set in the virtual world, where a team of three students is pitted against four others. Taking the title of general managers, their companies will engage in a sales battle to try to gain the highest Share Price Index (SPI). This is a duel of market analysis and management decisions that will go on for five rounds.

But wait, this is just the beginning, the eliminations to be exact. The rest of the competition will actually take place offline. The semifinals are all about writing a business plan. Based on the performance in this round as well as the eliminations, the top three teams get some really good prizes. The third placers get to experience some fine dining. Meanwhile, the second place winners receive an overnight accommodation. As for the grand prize winners, they’re off to the island of Boracay. But that’s not all, there’s also that trip to Paris.

Yes, the top 16 teams are off to the international finals in Paris, France. This is the time when the business plans are to be presented and defended. And if the team wins, L’Oreal is packing the team members off to anywhere around the world with free accommodations.

Indeed, there are newer (and perhaps, more amusing) ways to be introduced to the field of enterprise. Now, isn’t selling loads of fun?

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E-mail the author at ice_wave_42@yahoo.com.