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