Tinkering in Class:Using the Tinker Toy Exercise to Teach First Mover Advantages and the Resource-Based View

We suggest how an experiential exercise using building toys - such as Tinker Toys or Builderifics, can be used to teach students about the concepts of first-mover advantages and the resource-based view. The exercise requires the class to be broken up into teams. Each team is then assigned the task of building the tallest tinker toy tower they can in a short amount of time. After each team is allowed sequentially to attempt to build a tall tower, the class then discusses why later teams tended to do better than earlier teams at accomplishing this task. The discussion should revolve around the resource-based view concepts of rarity, imitability and substitutability, and the first-mover advantages (technological leadership, preemption, switching costs and buyer uncertainty) and disadvantages (free-rider effects, resolution of technological or market uncertainty, shifts in technological or customer needs, and incumbent inertia).