Budapest Corvinus University beats a leading US university

Corvinus students beat the University of California, Berkeley team to take bronze at an international business competition in Los Angeles in mid-February.

The Corvinus University of Budapest team beat two of the world’s top ten universities in the Marshall International Case Competition: the National University of Singapore, ranked 8th in the QS World University Rankings, and the University of California, Berkeley, ranked 10th.

Corvinus was represented by Anna Kálmán, Noémi Kopka, Alexandra Pongrácz and Tamás Gáspár, and the lecturer having prepared them, Miklós Stocker. In the competition, participants had to perform in various formats; sometimes they had to come up with a solution to a complex business problem within 5 hours, while other times they had 24 hours to do so. The focus of the short case was on how a digital transformation consulting firm could achieve radical growth by employing a specific strategy tailored to the market. In the long case, the task was to encourage more digital interactions among fans of a football club and to elevate the club’s brand to international renown. Corvinus’ solutions came first in their division in both cases.

Tamás Gáspár, Alexandra Pongrácz, Miklós Stocker, Noémi Kopka, and Anna Kálmán Photo: Budapest Corvinus University

“During the competition we benefited greatly from the wide range of case studies taught in a well thought-out system at Corvinus. For the consultancy case, for example, our team developed a client acquisition strategy for the Asian market with a manufacturing and retail focus, based on an analysis of the external environment,” said Anna Kálmán, one of the team members.

“I was extremely pleased to receive feedback after the final that our team’s solution, judged on both accuracy, depth and feasibility, would be taught by a lecturer from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. This also shows that students interested in business programmes can get world-class knowledge in Hungary” – shared Miklós Stocker, Head of the Institute of Strategy and Management at Corvinus University, who also runs the Case Track at the university, which prepares students for business case competitions.

Photo: Corvinus

In the multi-round student competition, the Corvinus team was the only one to qualify for the final five with a 100% score, finishing in a respectable third place behind teams from Emory University, Atlanta and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. The Hungarians also beat the Rotterdam School of Management and the Business School of the University of Hong Kong in the final. The format of the final was special, as instead of the usual presentation and question-and-answer session, the team had to give a half-hour presentation in which the jury had the opportunity to stop the team at any time after 5 minutes and ask questions about the solution, which of course was used many times. The presentations of the final can be watched on the Facebook page of the organisers, the Corvinus presentation starts at 2:44.

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