Power Play
Faculty Author: Dennis Yao
Student teams representing General Electric and Westinghouse engage in a bidding competition for a series of contracts
- About Power Play
- More Details
Power Play is a dynamic environment in which teams of students assume the identities of General Electric and Westinghouse and compete for turbine generator contracts. The interface has a four-section display (shown below); each section provides the team with the information needed to compete in the bidding process.
- Bid Area — students submit bids to the application, where they are processed and compared to their competitor's bids.
- Current Information — during the preliminary stage of each round, students get feedback on whether their bid is higher or lower than their competitor's. After submitting their final bid, students will see the outcome of each round in the last column. If the round was public, both the winner and the clearing price will be shown; if the round was private, only the winner (not the winning price) will be shown.
- Company Price Book and Estimated Costs — each team starts with a set of information about their own production costs, plus additional, less precise information about their competitor's costs.
- Messages — short, public announcements can be issued between competing teams and are posted to this area. As a way of demonstrating the unreliability of signaling, the application is designed to garble — or even drop — messages in a random fashion, so students will never be sure how their messages are actually being perceived by their competition.
