Nanyang Business School Wins 34th John Molson MBA Case Competition

International Business Students Compete at Annual JMSB Event

NewsAlex Ocheoha — Published January 14, 2015 | Updated January 14, 2015 at 6:48pm

The team from Singapore, who were also winners of the B & G Communications division, won all their cases in the competition.

“For real, I feel amazing,” said Cory Reid, a Nanyang Business School team member. “My team really came together strong. We were really worried at the beginning because we had practiced but not at this level.”

The competition involved teams applying their knowledge and skills they learned in class towards solving “actual business cases,” according to the official rules and guidelines on its website. The annual John Molson MBA International Case Competition is the world’s oldest and largest case competition.

“My solution was probably one tenth of what the team presented. They just went way beyond what I would have done,” said Akshay Regulagedda, a coach at the school .

Akshay was a member of the Nanyang Business School semi-finalist team in last year’s case competition, who were co-winners of the Richard Outcault Team Spirit Award.

Teams competed head to head in five cases against five other teams in their division. The top nine teams competed for three places in the finals. JMSB’s team was one of the nine that qualified for the semi-finals. The competition is known as being highly competitive with teams comprising students from the world’s top business schools.

This year’s surprise live case was presented by Lufa Farms. Lufa Farms is an urban agriculture enterprise based in Montreal.

The case centered on expanding their model to new markets, and positioning the company as a leader in the rapidly growing urban agriculture industry, with $1 billion in revenues by the end of 2020.

“The most amazing thing about the John Molson competition is meeting the most brilliant people, the most brilliant kids that I have ever met in my entire life,” said Mohamed Hage, founder and CEO of Lufa Farms. “It has been a charm going around talking to everybody, listening to what they had to teach me, I have learnt so much in one evening. It is unbelievable.”

John Molson MBA students Roberto Blanc, Allysha Carr, Kiran Jayaramaiah and Rasha Dergham were all extremely proud to be organizers of this prestigious event.
“Personally, it was the best experience of my MBA program,” said Roberto Blanc. “This year’s edition was a huge success, and for the first time in its 34 years of history, an Asian team, Nanyang University, won the Concordia Cup.”

The team from the Porto Business School took second place and won a $7,000 cash prize. They were also winners of the TouchTunes division.
“I am pretty happy about my team’s presentation today,” said Renata Blanc, the business school’s coach. “They won every case until the final so they were a very strong team.”

The Moore School of Business team of the University of South Carolina took third place and won a $5,000 cash prize.

The winner of this year’s Richard Outcault Team Spirit Award was the Graduate School of Business at the University of Cape Town. Professor Leo Donlevy, coach for the Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary won the Dr. J. Pierre Brunet Coach Award.

36 schools from 15 different countries around the world took part in the 34th edition of the competition. The event took place at the Fairmont Hotel Queen Elizabeth from Jan. 4 to 9. The theme of this year’s competition was “Global Connections—Sustainable Future.”