Earlier this semester, four students from BYU Marriott’s Global Management Center won second place in the NU-CUIBE International Business Case Competition in Boston. Team members competed against fourteen other universities and walked away with valuable insights they plan to apply to their future careers.
The competition was held on Northeastern’s Boston campus, and the BYU team consisted of accounting major Dmitrii Liu from Taiwan; finance major Denise Han from Missouri City, Texas; and global supply chain management students Sarah Blake from Spokane, Washington; and Tanner Wegrowski from Temecula, California.
After months of preparation, the BYU Marriott team felt ready to take on the competition. “The students were trained to look at a case and break it down,” says team coach and BYU Marriott adjunct professor Liz Dixon. “Not only do the students analyze the case from a finance and marketing perspective but also from an understanding of international issues such as ethics, culture, and sustainability.”
On the first day of the competition, each team was given an international case about a Polish company, Phenicoptere, and asked to find ways to push its product—Glov, a reusable makeup-remover glove—to the global market. The teams only had twenty-four hours to work on their cases before presenting the following day.
The second day of the competition resulted in each team competing against four other teams with only one team from each group advancing to the next phase of the competition. After winning in the first round, BYU Marriott students presented during the final round of the competition, finishing with a second-place win.
"The CUIBE case competition was an invaluable experience,” says Wegrowski. “We were able to learn how to approach real-world international business problems and present our findings in a powerful and convincing way.”
Though the competition lasted for three days, the preparation started much earlier in the semester. Since September, the BYU Marriott team met weekly with Dixon to analyze old cases, learn presentation skills, and work on their case delivery.
“Our team would present to a panel of BYU Marriott professors who had volunteered to mimic the competitive atmosphere as much as possible, and then they would give us feedback. And give us feedback, they did,” says Han. “Their feedback pushed me to not only work harder each time but also to seek more feedback from those with more experience than I have.”
The weekly meetings provided valuable learning experiences for all the students involved and helped them think strategically about international issues and businesses. This practice helped secure their second-place spot at the NU-CUIBE International Business Case Competition.
The BYU Marriott students walked away with more than a plaque, however. “The lessons I learned from preparing and competing helped me become more confident in my ability to make a difference in a company,” says Blake. “This experience also taught me how important it is to have people in school or work that build you up and help you become better. My teammates certainly did that for me.”
_
Writer: Nikaela Smith