Last week I got to go up to OSU to participate in case analysis competition representing UC's College of Business. UC wasn't originally invited but they had a team drop out a few weeks before the competition and asked UC if they could step in. So Susan Sadlier who is Director of International Programs asked several students that she was familiar with if they would be interested. I said I was and talked it over with Shanna. Despite the comptetion taking place over our anniversary and having a new baby we felt like this was a great opportunity and that I should go.
So without any real advanced notice or practice our team of 4 went up to Columbus to compete. The full list of competing teams is:
Audencia Ecole de Management, Nantes, France
Brigham Young University, Marriott School of Management
Instituto Tecnológico Autónoma de México (ITAM), Mexico City, México
Queen's School of Business, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
San Diego State University, College of Business Administration
The Ohio State University, Fisher College of Business
Università Bocconi, Milan, Italy
University of Cincinnati, College of Business
University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business
University of Texas at Austin, McCombs School of Business
University of Wisconsin-Madison, School of Business
On Wednesday we got to take a tour of the Marysville Honda plant which is nothing short of spectacular. Then later that evening we had dinner and a tour at the state capital. The next morning at breakfast we were given our case and worked all day and most of the night on our case. The next morning at 8:30am we made our presentation. I felt like we started off slow but gained momentum and REALLY did well in the Q&A portion. We had 20 minutes for our presentation and then 20 minutes of Q&A from 5 judges. The judges ranged from local business leaders to OSU faculty.
Anyway, from our room BYU advanced and eventually went on to win the whole thing. It was a great learning experience and despite missing my family and my anniversary it was well worth it. There is a post on UC's website HERE
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6 comments:
Those crazy Mormons - always ruining everything!!!
Oh speaking of that...every team was given an anonymous name (to prevent judge bias) and since we visited the Honda plant they named each team after a Honda vehicle. It was a random draw but guess what BYU drew? oh yeah...Honda Odyssey
that's awesome, aaron! shanna was telling me that you had been chosen, and on such short notice; didn't everyone else have like, months, to prepare and y'all got just a few weeks? congrats!
what a great opportunity!
Essentially the way it worked for the other schools is that for them they take a class in the spring doing case study and case analysis. Then they take the best 4 from the class and practice all summer and fall up until the competition. They had months of preparation where we only had days. We got a lot of compliments on how well we performed especially given the circumstances. I'm sure there were plenty of "we better not get beat by those guys" comments.
If I had gotten more sleep in Aaron's absence I would've posted a blog about this competition! I want everyone to know (especially Aaron) how proud I am that Aaron was chosen for this competition and that he rose to the challenge. I think I would've been too overwhelmed or intimidated competing against teams that have been preparing for 9 months. He wasn't! He did an amazing job(based on comments from the judges) and really stretched himself.
Congrats Aaron, you are awesome! So proud of you!
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