Everyone Wins

When Google decided to expand into China, the government there told the Internet search engine company it would either have to self-manage the information people were able to access, or it would manage it for them. This prickly problem of open access and freedom to information was just one of the business cases a team of five students from Halifax’s Nova Scotia Community College (NSCC) Waterfront campus faced this past March as they competed head-to-head in international competition.

The NSCC team ultimately placed third against 18 other teams from15 countries in the international business case competition held in Doha, Qatar. What was really remarkable is that the school put together its team a mere two weeks before the contest.

“We had no preparation, almost nothing to speak of,” recalls team coach Malcolm Burtt, a faculty member of the NSCC’s School of Business. “Going into it, the odds were stacked way against us. We didn’t think we had a hope, but we were there to experience and give our students the opportunity to present on the global stage and to test our mettle as a college.”

NSCC’s third place finish under such tight timelines comes as no surprise. Atlantic Canada has a strong reputation for its feisty performances and winning ways in such competitions.International case competitions give students a chance to put into practice the business and marketing theories they’ve learned in the classroom. The competitions call for students to think on their feet and require them to solve complex organizational problems in a short time span.

Typical issues students might face are whether a company should go global, or how it should market a particular product. Generally, they are presented with a problem concerning a firm that needs strategic advice in a number of different areas. The cases themselves tend to be studies generated from such places as Harvard. However, some competitions do feature “live” case studies, complete with involvement from executives.

The longest-running international case competition in Canada is the John Molson MBA competition first held in 1982, at Montreal’s Concordia University. It is now known as the “oldest and largest case competition in the world,” annually attracting 36 teams from four continents. The “most winning team” in the history of the competition comes from Atlantic Canada.

Over a 28-year period, Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador has won or placed in the top three in the competition 10 times. In 1991, they had the only all-female team to ever win the competition. Peggy Coady is the current team’s coach as well as a former winner in the competitions herself. The director of Graduate Programs (Business) at Memorial says every student who has ever participated in a case competition calls it the best part of his or her MBA.

“It’s because it’s real life. It’s think on your feet,” she says. “It’s applying what you learned in class. I think your whole life after, you realize what you can do in under three hours is pretty amazing.”

Competition is “intense,” according to Coady. A typical competition pits teams of four to five students from different universities against each other. They are given the case to analyze and often placed in a room with no Internet access, where they have two to five hours to read the case and prepare a presentation. Then they present to a panel of judges, often made up of company representatives and industry experts. The students are given 15 to 20 minutes to state their case and then undergo a rigorous question period.

Preparing for competition is equally demanding. Memorial, for example, is one of a number of universities which actually offers a course in case competition participation. When students start gearing up for competition, they will spend weekends simulating the event. They are often given 30-page case studies to read and three hours to analyze the case and come up with a 25-minute presentation.

Winning strategies include good time management skills, the ability to quickly synthesize and analyze information, and creativity. “These cases, there’s often a problem and you have to be able to come up with a creative solution,” Coady notes.

For their part, the judges score each team by its demonstrated understanding of the problem, the quality of its analysis and the options they present to the company. They also judge how those recommendations might be put into practice.