Inspired by Robert Axelrod’s The Evolution of Cooperation, for which he won a MacArthur “genius” award, ACS built a technology platform— Decision Tournaments™ —to revolutionize decision-making in business strategy.
Professor Axelrod asked whether cooperation is an adaptive strategy or whether it leads to being taken advantage of. To answer that question, he ran a computer tournament in which he simulated iterated Prisoner’s Dilemmas. His tournament tested scores of strategies to show what strategies — cooperative, selfish, reactive, greedy, simple, complex — work when played against all other strategies.
ACS evolved that idea into a business decision tournament where you can compete with your colleagues and others to see exactly how successful your decisions are. “Success” in the tournament, as in the real world, means getting what you want. So if you want profits, a strategy that succeeds will get you profits. Or at least the best profits possible, given the industry and competitors’ actions. You may want growth, share, deterrence, something else, or some combination.
The ACS decision tournament is innovative and extraordinarily powerful because:
- It’s safe. Because it runs in a computer we can test ideas that might seem too innovative or risky to implement in real life. We’re not limited to tradition.
- Our technology can test the robustness of any given strategy by simulating all the combinations of strategies, even if it’s tens of millions.
- We can work with strategic intent. For instance, you might choose a strategy that follows your competitor’s moves (e.g., cut prices if they do), so you’re not making the first move.
- We get past the confounding problem of multiple simultaneous events by isolating strategies.
- We get a realistic look at bottom-line results. Players indicate their objectives — market share of units, return on sales, etc.— which provided player-specific success metrics.
ACS tournament technology is derived from our award-winning ValueWar® strategy simulator and can be fully customized for your business.
If you would like to experience an ACS decision tournament, please contact us. You can get a taste of a decision tournament and test your strategy skills in a free tournament we’ve put together.