Lesson Activity - Using the Business Influence Cards

Here are some suggested lesson activities that can be used with tutor2u’s new Business Influence Cards. Sets of these great cards can be ordered here

What are the Influence Cards?

A series of 60 internal and external influence scenarios.

SUGGESTED USE

When to Use:

- At the start of a specific unit topic area -e.g. Marketing, Finance, Operations, Human Resources: select only those cards which are most relevant to the topic area
- As way to recap and reinforce learning after covering a topic area

How to Use

- Sorting exercise: shuffle the cards and ask students to organise them into categories: e.g. internal v external; sort by functional area; sort by short-term, medium-term, long-term

- Take a business news story from the BBC website - pick 3-4 cards at random and ask students to consider whether any of the influences are significant to the business in the news

- For a given case study, identify 2-3 cards which may impact on the business - students are asked to consider the “depends on” factors - when might the influence become important to the business, and why?

- Play a game of Influence Card Consequences: pick one card - write down a possible consequence for a business - pass the consequences list onto the next student / table who then add a consequence to the previous entry

E.g: a competitor launches a new product that customers find is the best value in the market:
Student 1: writes a consequence: “Business will lost market share” - passes onto Student 2 (with only the last response showing)
Student 2: “Business may reduce price to improve competitiveness” - passes onto Student 3 (who only sees the latest response)
Student 3: Profit margins may fall if costs cannot be reduced too..etc etc

Ranking exercise: pick 5 cards and rank them in terms of importance/significance to the case study business

Good news | Bad news: for a given case study, identify three influence cards which are likely to be very good or very bad news for the business

Lesson starter - take a card: each student takes a card as they comes into the lesson: their task is to find a way of mentioning (relevantly) the influence at any stage during the lesson