Beedie students find the podium at International Case Competition in Maastricht

by Jevta Lukic

MAASTRICHT, The Netherlands — A team of Beedie School of Business undergraduate students — Flora Lee, Darren Moens, Jaspreet Singh, and Larisa Topalo — has garnered a notable Top-3 placing at the prestigious International Case Competition, recently held at the Maastricht University School of Business and Economics.

The SFU team competing under the name Audacia (meaning “daring, audacious, and bold”) earned an impressive top divisional spot and an overall bronze placing among 16 leading universities from Singapore, Hong Kong, Pakistan, Canada, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Portugal, Italy, Germany and The Netherlands.

“The caliber of students was really high,” said Flora Lee, one of the SFU competitors. “It was a really rewarding experience to compete against some of the top business students in the world.”

The International Case Competition @ Maastricht (ICC@M) is an annual business case competition that challenges students to solve real-life business issues. This year, from May 8 to 13, ICC@M brought 64 top students from 16 business schools worldwide to the competition in Maastricht. The students completed two three-hour business cases and one 24-hour long case and presented their recommendations to a panel of judges comprised of business academics, leaders, and executives.

The SFU team’s 24-hour case involved one of the world’s largest pension funds, and the team tackled questions about their investments and corporate social responsibility obligations.

“The team was everything I expected them to be and more,” said Peter Tingling, Beedie School of Business professor and Team Audacia’s coach. “They rose to the occasion with analysis that was comprehensive and acute. I have seen many top quality case competitions and leading teams from around the world and the SFU team was very easily at home.”

In emerging as the top school in Division B, the Beedie School ousted teams from the University of South Wales,
Queensland University of Technology and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

“All of the cases were real-life business issues and the company’s representatives were there as judges,” said Lee. “It was quite motivating to think that that the executives could be inspired by our own ideas.”

The SFU Beedie School of Business team’s final round presentation can be viewed online at http://iccmaastricht.virb.com/