SFU Beedie celebrates 20th anniversary of CaseIT international MIS case competition

CaseIT Organizing Committee

In February 2023, SFU’s Beedie School of Business celebrated the 20th anniversary of the CaseIT international MIS case competition. This annual event brings some of the world’s top undergraduate business students to Vancouver to compete in a challenging week-long case competition that tests their analytical and presentation skills.

This year’s competition was particularly special, as it marked two decades since the first CaseIT competition was held at SFU Beedie. Over the years, CaseIT has become one of the most prestigious and respected case competitions in the world, attracting top talent from global universities.

2023 also marked a triumphant return to in-person programming. After two years of online competitions, this year’s organizing committee rose to the challenge and delivered a hugely successful competition. Led by CaseIT 2023 chair, Vanessa Chau, the organizing committee of 51 students planned the event over 10 months with support from their academic director, Dr. Simon Ford, and Hansel Wu, coordinator at SFU Beedie’s Student Engagement and Development Office.

“It is with immense gratitude that I have been able to take part in CaseIT as the 2023 chair,” said Chau. “Throughout my undergraduate journey, CaseIT has been the ultimate stadium for transforming my self-doubts and apprehensions into passion, confidence, and resilience. Thank you to the CaseIT community for empowering the growth, perseverance, and innovative capabilities of the next generation of business and technology leaders.”

“I am lucky to have worked alongside some of the most inspiring people at SFU Beedie, and I am incredibly proud of how our team brought this competition to life,” said Ezrah Glanville, Vice-Chair of Marketing. “The friendships, memories, and lessons that I take away from CaseIT will be cherished forever, and have truly changed my undergraduate experience. I look forward to seeing CaseIT continue to flourish and I am so thankful that I was able to leave a mark on this legacy.”

The 2023 CaseIT competition saw 72 undergraduate students from 18 of the world’s top business schools across Asia, Europe, and North America compete. Each team was given two cases to analyze. Competing teams were given just a few hours to analyze the cases, develop their recommendations, and present their findings to judging panels of industry experts.

The first of the two cases, the 5-hour case, focused on BC Cancer and its development and implementation of a connected chatbot. The second, the 24-hour case, challenged competitors to identify opportunities for developing diffusion model machine learning products at 1QBit. Given recent excitement and uncertainty over generative AI applications such as ChatGPT and DALL·E 2, this latter case was particularly relevant and timely.

For many competitors, coming to Vancouver to compete at CaseIT was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Along with the case competition itself, the organizing committee planned a variety of social events throughout the week to enable competitors and coaches to get to know each other, including visiting favourite local tourist spots, a seaplane city tour for coaches, a yoga wellness event, and networking with Microsoft representatives at their Gastown office.

Impressing the judges in the finals, Queen’s University’s Smith School of Business (Canada) emerged as this year’s winner. The 2022 winner, Maastricht University’s School of Business and Economics (Netherlands), took home second place, and the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management (U.S.) placed third. The best speaker award went to Georgina Powell from the University of Manchester.

“I’m incredibly proud of what our organizing committee accomplished, the excellence of their competition delivery, and the personal growth I’ve seen among the management team during the months of planning,” said Dr. Ford.

As SFU Beedie celebrates the 20th anniversary of CaseIT, the school looks back on two decades of innovation, collaboration, and excellence. The competition has become a cornerstone of the student experience and has helped to establish the school as a leader in business education and experiential learning. SFU Beedie looks ahead to another 20 years of CaseIT and the new information systems and technological challenges that will be analyzed in future competitions.