One of the biggest challenges for any Enterprise today is Social Media Optimisation, defined as "a set of methods for generating publicity through social media, online communities and community websites." The Social Media Optimization Simulator Game lets you instantly 'what-if' the effects of different social media activities (blogging, tweeting etc) on your enterprise.

I believe that products like Second Life could provide powerful immersive platforms to link together web applications (eg via web services) in much more engaging ways for various collaborative group applications such as team games and business simulations.

The Discipline of Market Leaders (TDML) by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema (1997) equips the leadership of an enterprise with a choice of 3 strategies for competing in the marketplace - Customer Intimacy, Operational Excellence or Product Leadership. TDML says you must excel in one of these AND maintain minimum thresholds for the other two. Here is a little web-based management simulation which lets you to test TDML strategies virtually before betting your business on them!

A few years back I developed a simulation to expose key dilemmas in the incubation stage of Virtual Enterprise Networks. I used a powerful simulation-building tool called ithink from Isee, the newest version of which now allows deployment of simulations over the web. So I just republished the VEN simulation for free on www.bioteams.com.

For a manager, whose only background is traditional monolithic enterprises, being put in charge of a virtual business network or a collaborative supply chain is like a fixed wing pilot trying to fly a helicopter without any training. With the extra degree of freedom and the lack of inherent stability involved there is only going to be one outcome unless that leader spends some time on a network simulator first. Here is a chance to build-up some solid flight training hours before you take-off in the real thing!

Leading a virtual business network requires different skills than leading a traditional team. Many of these skills are unfortunately very counter-intuitive due to the living, evolving nature of such networks. Discovering this 'on the job' is almost as crazy as training airline pilots without using flight simulators!

Ant communications are very different from the communications we typically experience in our organizational teams. In fact they are so different that to really understand them you have to try and find some way to experience them. Here is one way!

Those who don’t believe that humans can swarm and flock must not have been watching the World Cup in Germany. The Mexican Wave, or La Ola, is a spontaneous activity involving very simple individual behaviors which produces an amazing collective result.

If you want to play with PC-based simulations which introduce key bioteams concepts then its worth a visit to the MIT Starlogo site where under the PROJECTS section you can simulate the behaviour of bees, fireflies, slime, termites, rabbits, ants and boids (birdoids).

Leading a virtual team requires different skills than leading a traditional team. For example many virtual team and virtual network outcomes are counter-intuitive due to the complex living nature of the team itself. Discovering this 'on the job' is as crazy as training airline pilots without using flight simulators! This article describes a research project which developed a PC-based simulator tool to help virtual team leaders experience decision making in various scenarios.