Advancing Acquisition of Business Know-How: Critical Learning Elements

The turbulent business environment requires business expertise from ever-larger personnel groups. The required business know-how is a combination of knowledge and several different skills, and it should provide the learners with an overall view of the functioning of a business organization as a whole. Moreover, while work is increasingly becoming a team and group effort, the potential strength of collaboration should also be presented in the learning environment. In this paper we first identify elements that advance the acquisition of relevant business know-how. Second, we describe how these elements can be embedded in a time intensive business simulation game, and present two simulation training sessions. Third, we analyze how the participants in the case trainings reflect on the elements that advance the acquisition of business knowledge. The analysis is qualitative by nature, utilizing simulation game participants' answers on questions concerning the different elements. Our results show that with dynamic simulations it is possible to support the team learning process, and enhance collaboration skills and overall understanding of the functioning of business organizations.