Business Leadership Experience – Learning How Leadership Really Works
What does it feel like to lead a company – with real decisions, real risk and international responsibility?
This question was at the heart of an extraordinary learning format that HBS Berlin developed and led for one of the world's largest private banks over six years.
In this international program, young talents from more than 15 countries came together to experience entrepreneurial thinking firsthand.
The challenge: to take over a family business on Lake Zurich – an exclusive manufactory for handcrafted luxury boats.
Realistic. Strategic. Competitive.
In a realistic business simulation, specially designed by HBS Berlin, participants led the company over three fiscal years: they made operational and strategic decisions, analyzed financial reports, created key performance indicators and competed against rival teams.
Accompanying learning modules on Business Model Canvas and Balanced Scorecard helped participants structure and reflect on their decisions.
But that was not all: in a second, complementary simulation, the teams invested their earned profits on a virtual stock market – learning how investment strategies and risk profiles expand entrepreneurial thinking.
Learning you can feel.
As exceptional as the content itself.
Specially designed 3D tables, high-quality materials and an atmosphere that conveyed a genuine management experience.
After an intensive week, participants took away not only new business knowledge but above all a deeper understanding of how complex entrepreneurial decisions really are – and how closely strategy, finance, risk and collaboration are intertwined.
Leadership was no longer just theoretical – it was experienced.
Many later described the experience as a moment when theory and practice suddenly came together.
The Business Leadership Experience powerfully demonstrated how learning becomes most effective when people take responsibility, make decisions and directly experience the consequences of their actions.