Imagine you are a leader in the fishing industry. You have to balance the need to compete against others and make a living in a tough industry with the need to limit the total catch in order to sustain fishery for future generations. Your decisions affect your company's bottom line and the health of fish stocks and ocean ecosystems. Can you earn a profitable living without decimating the fish stocks, forcing everyone into bankruptcy and destroying the communities that rely on fishing for their livelihood?

Teachers and students everywhere can now explore such scenarios through Fishbanks, an interactive management flight simulator available online at no cost through the MIT Sloan Teaching Innovation Resources (MSTIR) website.

Designed by MIT Sloan School of Management Professor John Sterman to instruct the school's MBAs about the challenges of sustainably managing common pool resources, this web-based simulation of the game can be played by an individual or in teams in a single session or over the course of a semester. The program was adapted and updated from a board game originally created by former MIT Sloan professor and alumnus Dennis Meadows.

"Management flight simulators such as Fishbanks bring an experiential aspect to learning about complex systems", says Sterman, who also directs the MIT System Dynamics Group. "They have more impact than simply listening to a lecture or engaging in a case-study discussion."

Other management flight simulators offered through MSTIR include Salt Seller, a commodity- pricing simulation; Eclipsing the Competition, a solar-photovoltaic industry simulation; and the soon-to-be-released Platform Wars, a video-game industry simulation.