creativeforge - Georges Camy

General tactics and tips

• Invest in market research. You will want to have all information that's available.
• Think about your strategy for the second market. You don't know how fast it will get mature and what its potential will be. Maybe it is good to wait until your competitors launched their products on it and you have enough data to launch the right product. Maybe it is best to be amongst the pioneers of that market. You will have to be flexible. But in any case you wouldn't want to ignore that market, even if you achieved absolute supremacy over the first market.
• Don't care about your stock price. In this game stock price doesn't have any influence whatsoever. You want a healthy growing company, you don't need to please anyone.
• Stars need more advertising then cash cows.
• Question marks need even more advertising then stars. So think carefully about them.
• It is better not to sell all your products then to have a shortage. (Massive overproduction is unhealthy of course)
• One product for one consumer group is easier to hold and to improve then one product that gets sold to several consumer groups.
• Watch your competitors actions. Chances are that they will repeat their successful strategies, thus making them foreseeable. If you have the means to, encourage them by your actions to make them repeat their mistakes, invest more in their doomed products and neglect their cash cows. But don't forget that your priority should always be the healthy growth of your company. Crushing your opponents is a bonus.
• It is a game. There will be no hidden investors or new competitors. If you know the financial situation of your competitors and you have enough resources left to cripple them, do so. In end-game the financial differences might be big enough for you to allow you to launch a new product (even at a loss) just to drain the income of your competitors. The weaker they get, the less of a threat they are.