Graduate Studies Blog
Article contributed by Leo Tan Teck Soon & Komal Goyal.
After travelling 7500 miles for an average of 20 hours, we finally stepped out into the cold freezing temperatures (-22 degrees Celsius) of Montreal, braced to enter the war zone – John Molson MBA International Case Competition 2018. We were wrought with nerves that tingled with both excitement about the new opportunities that this 6-day experience would bring and anxiety of upholding the reputation of Nanyang Business School in this competition.
The journey to make it to Canada was not easy. First, the entire cohort participated in an internal selection that consisted of 3 case competition rounds. Once selected, we underwent eight training sessions with previous years’ participants as our coaches and mentors.
The practice sessions were tough. They were usually conducted after school lectures and run late into the night as we spent hours discussing ways on improving our case solving techniques after every session. Our first practice was a complete disaster and we were clearly reminded of how far we were from being polished and ready for the competition. Through valuable feedback that we received from our coaches, the team was able to explore different ways of improving our teamwork, productivity and presentation skills. Even by the eighth practice session, we were still conscious of the fact that there was still a lot of room for improvement.
Once at John Molson, the organizers kicked-off the competition with an opening breakfast ceremony at 7:00 am where they introduced us to the 36 participating schools, welcomed the carefully solicited pool of 300+ judges from different disciplines and acquainted us with the committee of 150 volunteers who would be our best friends for the next 6 days. The level of meticulous planning that went into organizing an event at such a scale was impressive to say the least. Seeing the scale and grandeur of just the opening ceremony alone, we knew that the stakes were high.
The JM ICC was designed like a tournament league where all 36 teams were divided into 6 divisions, each comprising of 6 teams. Each team went through 5 rounds competing with the 5 other schools within its division. In total, 9 teams will progress to the semi-finals that consists of 6 divisional winners and 3 wild card entries (decided based on points). Our first case was on ‘handrails’ against the Laval School Team, a French-Canadian school and one of the strongest teams in the competition. Although we managed to win the case, it was quite a close match with a differential of less than 2 points. We placed third in our division in terms of points and it became even more important to win all the next few matches for us to be able to proceed to the semi-finals as the divisional winner.
The next day was very crucial as we were up against the 2 leading schools in our division. We did a short review of our performance over breakfast and vowed to win both the matches the next day. Despite our best efforts, we ended up losing one case that set our team back with only 2 wins as opposed to the UCT GSB school from South Africa which was leading the division with 3 wins. At this point, we knew that we were in a precarious situation and that the game could go either way. We were confident of the remaining 2 rounds but UCT seemed to be on a winning streak as well. Our place in the semi-finals depended not only on us winning the next 2 cases by a large margin but also on UCT losing the next 2 rounds – classic game theory.
We got one of our most challenging cases on the 3rd day – a live case. The founder of a trading and logistics company based in Montreal came to present a live study of his company. He was seeking our inputs on defining the future vision of his company. In the night, we were treated to an ice hockey match between the Montreal Canadians (or also affectionately known as the ‘Habs’) and San Jose Sharks. After returning from the ice-hockey match, we braced ourselves for the results that shocked us all. Not only did we manage to win the case, but UCT also lost in their match. We felt relieved that our team was back in the game!
The 4th day was D-Day where each team would present their last case within their respective divisions. Only the qualifying teams would compete in the 2nd half for the semi-finals. We were overwhelmed with emotions as Nanyang Business School was announced as one of the division winners and qualified as a semi-finalist. It was incredible moment for all of us.
On to the semi-finals, 9 teams battled it out in yet another exhausting round. In the semi-finals, we competed against the Asper business school and the University of Beirut. Unfortunately, the results for the semi-finals proved to be disappointing. While we could not make it to the finals, our entire journey right from first practice session till the last semi-finals taught us a lot about ourselves, team-work and effective decision-making. It also drove home the adage that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
The overall experience of representing our school at an international level, networking with people from diverse backgrounds and gaining feedback from senior executives in the business community was extremely enriching. It also drove home that point that the education we receive in NBS was on par with top business schools around the world as we witnessed first-hand on how all our training paid off. After every practice session, our alumni coaches always emphasized that NBS was considered one of the strongest teams in the John Molson competition. We were proud that we met the organizers’ reputations and lived up to NBS’s legacy.
There will always be room for improvement in everything that we do, but the learnings, connections and memories that we gained from this competition will last us a lifetime. When we started, we were 4 very different individuals with very diverse schools of thought and completely different working styles. This journey helped open our minds to different ideas and broadened our perspectives. We also learnt key skills in quickly identifying implicit challenges specific to each business problem and the courage to be big and bold on our ideas.
This transformation would not have been possible without our mentors and our coach Akshay who took valuable time off from his work to be with us in Canada and constantly guided us throughout the entire journey. We would also like to extend our heartfelt gratitude to Prof Vijay Sethi who gave us this invaluable opportunity as well as the NBS office for their unwavering support.
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