Industry Verticals · Education & Pedagogy

Exec-Ed Strategy — Set the Portfolio at Liffey Business School

A four-round, advanced executive-education strategy simulation set inside Liffey Business School — Executive Development (LBS-ED), the exec-ed arm of a leading Irish university business school in Dublin (€22M revenue, 24% operating margin, 35 staff plus a faculty pool of 55).

4 rounds Executive English, Español

Preview

About this simulation

A four-round, advanced executive-education strategy simulation set inside Liffey Business School — Executive Development (LBS-ED), the exec-ed arm of a leading Irish university business school in Dublin (€22M revenue, 24% operating margin, 35 staff plus a faculty pool of 55).

On 19 January 2026 three pressures converge on the annual strategy review: the Financial Times custom ranking has dropped 6 places (from #28 to #34, with a board-signalled strategic review if it falls below the top 40), the university finance office has raised the annual surplus target by €1.5M to fund a new campus building, and two anchor corporate clients worth a combined €3.1M/year are being courted by INSEAD and a fast-growing online provider while custom repeat business has slipped from 78% to 69%.

Faculty utilization sits at 88%, near the ceiling, and a fixed €4.0M faculty-investment budget must cover delivery, research time (an FT ranking input that is non-billable this year), new-programme development and practitioner recruitment.

Playing the Director of Executive Development, the team (1) reads the position — separating the lines that fund the unit from the lines that position it; (2) sets the portfolio mix and capacity allocation across open, custom and qualifications against the 88% utilization ceiling, deciding what to grow, hold or prune; (3) allocates the €4.0M faculty budget between billable delivery and the research/development that sustains ranking and pipeline, and sets a pricing posture under the market-positioning constraint; and (4) commits the strategy and defends the surplus-vs-ranking trade-off, an anchor-client retention play, and an explicit strategic sacrifice to the executive board and FT-conscious dean.

The math rewards a custom-led, research-funding, premium-where-earned, anchor-protecting strategy and punishes the five classic errors — surplus over position, blind across-the-board price rises, growing every line past the ceiling, ignoring the €3.1M anchors, and spending the whole budget on delivery with no pipeline.

Final KPIs track FT Ranking trajectory, Surplus vs the +€1.5M target, Client Retention %, and Faculty Utilization against the 88% ceiling.

Who it is for

An advanced simulation for participants used to working with the main frameworks and trade-offs of the subject, designed for executive education and experienced professionals.

How a session runs

  1. The instructor creates a session from the Eureka dashboard and invites the participants.
  2. Participants play 4 rounds. In each one they submit their decisions and the simulation calculates the results.
  3. The simulation can be run in English, Español.
  4. The instructor follows each participant's progress and results from the dashboard, and uses the class results for the debrief.

Decisions participants make

The decisions participants make during the simulation:

  • Which product line truly funds the unit — the highest margin contribution?
  • Which line most positions the brand and the FT ranking?
  • Diagnose the single biggest driver of the 6-place ranking slide
  • How candidly does your team name the surplus-vs-ranking tension as a real trade-off? (%)
  • Set the capacity mix across the three lines (must total 100% of faculty capacity)
  • Faculty is at 88% — what do you do to respect the ceiling?
  • The two anchor clients (€3.1M) sit in custom. How central are they to the mix?
  • Allocate the €4.0M faculty-investment budget (must total €4.0M)
  • Set the pricing posture under the market-positioning constraint
  • Anchor-client retention play against INSEAD and the online provider

What participants track

What participants follow on screen as the rounds go by:

  • FT Ranking, Retention & Surplus Trajectory

Subjects covered

Designed for courses in Education & Pedagogy.

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