Network effects, installed base, and natural monopoly
When a technology's value to each user grows with how many other users have already adopted it, price stops being the only thing that matters — being first, and being bigger, becomes its own kind of advantage. Students feel that dynamic directly: the same fee that would win a customer against a standing start does nothing once a rival has pulled ahead on installed base, and the market can tip decisively toward one winner even when both platforms are otherwise identical.
The simulation is built so you can teach several angles of that tension:
- Installed base vs. price. Every round, adoption is driven by both your fee and how many professionals already use your platform — configurable sensitivities let you dial up or down how much each one matters.
- Exit is permanent. A firm can walk away from a market at any point, but never come back — isolating how much of the standoff is really about the fixed cost of staying in an unwinnable fight.
- A real negotiated exit. Starting from a configurable round, you can run a live, out-loud negotiation in class between the two firms in a market, then record whatever they agree to — one exits, the other pays — directly into the simulation.
The Network Pull
Each team runs a professional networking platform, competing for the same pool of professionals deciding, every round, whether to adopt your platform, a rival's, or neither. The more professionals already on a platform, the more attractive it becomes to the next one — so early leads compound, and a firm can find itself fighting a network it can no longer catch.
Firms pay a fixed cost every round they stay active, can exit for good at any time, and — if you enable it — get one shot at a real negotiated exit partway through, decided out loud in class and then entered directly into the results.
