by Joanne Leung

A team of undergraduate students from Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business has been selected to participate in the 2012 Copenhagen Business School (CBS) Case Competition, one of the most high-profile competitions of its kind globally, held in Copenhagen, Denmark, from February 27 through March 2.

Beedie alumnus Matthew Martell will be coaching BBA students Amar Klino, Andrew McKinlay, Clare Lei, and May Yu for the world’s leading undergraduate case competition. Only twelve universities around the world are invited to participate in the CBS Case Competition each year, and only two Canadian universities have been chosen for the 2012 competition. The other Canadian school participating in the competition will be McGill University.

“It’s been a long grind from our first practice session to now,” said Amar Klino. “Prepping for Copenhagen has been like a full-time job for all of us, but it’s been a great experience and we’re really proud to be representing SFU on an international venue. We all believe SFU can compete with the best schools internationally and now’s our chance to prove that.”

The teams in the competition will be presented with a real-life business challenge and will have 32 hours to solve the case. Each team will be evaluated on the reasonability, creativity, and overall financial feasibility of their strategic approach.

To learn more about the Copenhagen Business School Case Competition, visit: http://www.casecompetition.com

History of the Copenhagen Business School Case Competition

Back in 2000, a team of students from Copenhagen Business School participated in the McIntire International Case Competition at the University of Virginia, US. This was no particular news, since teams of students from CBS had been participating in international case competitions for some time already. However, the story of two of the participating students would prove it differently. Seeing what they saw, they came up with a novel idea: Why not start up an international case competition for undergraduate business students in Europe? So far case competitions had predominantly been a North American phenomena.

The two students felt so inspired by the concept that they decided to investigate the possibilities of creating a case competition at CBS. As it turned out, President of CBS at that time, Finn Junge-Jensen, fully supported the idea, and in March 2002 the first annual case competition at Copenhagen Business School was a reality.