Portfolio Strategist — Atlântica Executive Learning's +25% Mandate

A four-round, intermediate portfolio-strategy simulation set inside Atlântica Executive Learning, the executive-education unit of a mid-sized business school in Porto, Portugal. In FY2025 the unit delivered 62 programmes to ~1,900 participants for €9.4M of revenue at 22% contribution (€2.07M). A September 2026 board mandate is blunt: lift contribution 25% — to €2.57M — within four quarters, with no new faculty.

The binding constraint is not demand but capacity: a hiring freeze fixes the faculty pool at 5,600 teaching-days a year, already running at 96% utilisation.

Playing the new Executive Director, you re-shape (you cannot enlarge) a portfolio of high-margin-but-volatile open programmes, steady-but-procurement-pressured in-company work, and sticky-but-capacity-heavy customised academies — one of which, a national bank's renewing academy, is 28% of revenue and is about to re-tender for a 12% price cut.

Round 1: diagnose the portfolio by the metric that matters when capacity is scarce — contribution per faculty-day, not absolute revenue or total margin — name the capacity hog (the €1,370/day academy versus the €2,100/day top open certificate) and frame the 28% concentration as crown-jewel-and-risk.

Round 2: shift the revenue mix, choose an open-programme pricing tier on the elasticity curve, decide the two under-filled flagships (one is the discovery funnel feeding the academies), and allocate faculty-days against the 5,600 ceiling.

Round 3: back exactly one growth sector (AI-for-managers, ESG, healthcare, or family-business) at credible scale (~300–450 days), respond to the anchor re-tender (concede, hold, or restructure with a quid pro quo), and fund the new franchise from within the ceiling. Round 4: stress-test against a shock and pitch the rector on contribution, yield-per-day and resilience.

The model rewards yield-led ranking, a high-yield mix tilt, elasticity pricing, a focused growth bet and a defended anchor — and punishes the five classic errors with sticky, run-defining penalties: ranking by revenue, scattering capacity across four sectors, conceding the anchor's 12% for nothing, booking faculty past 100% utilisation, and cutting the flagship funnel on standalone margin.

Final KPIs track contribution (€M) against the €2.57M target, faculty utilisation (%), anchor retention, and a forward market-relevance index.

An intermediate simulation for participants who already know the core concepts of the subject, designed for master's and MBA programmes.