Fourteen weeks as CIO, through digitization, AI, and consequence.
Student teams take the seat of a newly appointed CIO at DigitalCo, a regional industrial equipment manufacturer whose connected-products initiative has stalled and whose board is divided about what to do next. Over fourteen weeks the team makes the decisions a CIO faces in sequence (governance, architecture, data, AI, security, platform, cloud, and the politics around all of it) and lives with the options each decision closes off. Six AI advisors help teams think each decision through, and the final call stays with the team.
The protagonist and the company that inherits them.
Flexee MIS treats strategy as coherence and commitment sustained over time, and the simulation lets students feel what that means. A team makes a choice in week three and lives with what it closed off in week ten.
Each team runs DigitalCo, a regional industrial equipment manufacturer in the Dayton–Cincinnati corridor, with a founding family, a recent private-equity stake, and a stalled connected-products initiative the new CIO inherits. One question runs through the whole simulation: can DigitalCo build a real advantage from data and AI, or will it stay a commodity equipment maker with an expensive digital layer bolted on?
The CIO answers that question through fourteen weeks of decisions. Advisors weigh in. Consequences accumulate. The board watches.
Early choices constrain later ones. That's the point.
Long fuses.
Neglect operational-technology security in the first weeks and a gate quietly closes, then turns into a ransomware crisis on the connected fleet near the end. Several through-lines like this run the length of the simulation. They teach how strategic commitment works: what a team chooses early decides what stays possible later.
Bills that come due twice.
Take the convenient cloud deal that looks smart in week four and the bill comes due twice, once as the direct cost and once as the strategic constraint that came with it. Students learn to question the easy version of what stakeholders want, because the easy version is usually the trap.
Coherence audited live.
Near the end, the team's decisions get audited for coherence in front of the board, and a team that zigzagged finds out on the spot that it has no story to tell. The finale then traces each team's small early choices forward to the ending they earned.
Each one is right within its lane and biased at the edges.
Six AI advisors work with the CIO across all fourteen weeks. Each stays in character, covers a specific area, and advises without ever deciding, the way experts work with an executive. The hardest decisions come where their advice conflicts.
One simulation, two courses, parallel teams.
Fourteen weeks of decisions.
Teams play in parallel, each running its own DigitalCo, with standings revealed at the end of each phase. The simulation includes the six advisors, a board and executive cast, and assessment rubrics. Teams are scored on strategic judgment, execution, coherence, and the quality of their deliverables.
Four outcomes, all earned.
Each team ends in one of four outcomes, from a full transformation to a failed one where the private-equity owners force a change of direction. The finale traces each team's early choices forward, so every team can see how its own decisions produced its ending.
One simulation for undergrad and graduate MIS.
One simulation serves both courses through a single setting: how much of the thinking the simulation does for the student. Undergraduates get proactive advisors, named frameworks, and cleaner signals. Graduate students get reactive advisors, unlabeled frameworks, and noisier signals with hidden agendas. Faculty maintain one simulation and can teach both audiences without redesigning the course.
Every ending is traced back to the decisions that produced it.
See if Flexee MIS fits your MIS strategy course.
Flexee MIS is in use today and available for adoption in graduate and undergraduate MIS programs. Talk to Chuck about what your course covers now and how DigitalCo would fit.