On Monday, December 14, IBS Case Club organized the second training round of this year’s Inter-University Case Contest. It was managed by IBS-Plekhanov and trained its participants for the big Inter-University Case Contest – the project we have been running for over 5 years already, the 6th Case Contest to start in 2016. The event was a continuation of the earlier introductory case tournament for first year undergraduate students, on a larger scale. It brought together 14 teams, including international exchange students from partner universities of IBS-Plekhanov in the EU, first and second year students of IBS-Plekhanov faculty and our special guests - students from Russian Foreign Trade Academy. The event went well, and this was witnessed not only by participants, but also by the independent assessors: no deadline was missed and everything went smoothly.  

 

The case offered for analysis, from participants’ point of view, was challenging, but at the same time very interesting. The tournament brought students together and helped them develop their analytical, presentation, team-building and time-management skills. What is more, it was an excellent opportunity to show the ability to use the English language in an efficient and persuasive way. 

 

Case solution, presentation and an overall work of the teams was assessed by a panel of experienced independent assessors, including

• Larisa Ignatova – a consulting and professional services expert, CEO of Integral Projects

• Ekaterina Petrenko– Category development expert in National Accounts of Mars Russia and CIS. When Ekaterina was a student, she lead the winning team in the final of the Inter-University Case contest

• Elizaveta Oginskaya - an analyst from Changellenge, the country’s top company in case contest management.

 Here are the top three teams:

• 1 place – an international team "The White-Collar Bosses":

-     Axel Crueger, an international exchange student of IBS-Plekhanov from Copenhagen Business School (Denmark)

-     Daniel Dueck, an international exchange student of IBS-Plekhanov from Hof University of Applied Sciences (Germany)

-     Julia Khen, 1st year student of IBS-Plekhanov

• 2 place - "Asian Tigers Consulting Group" team of second year IBS-Plekhanov students: Ilya Shifrin, Dmitry Romanov and Tran Anh.

• 3 place –"George Valentinovich" team: second year IBS-Plekhanov students: Ekaterina Kudryavtseva, Andrey Malkov and Vladimir Abazov

 

The best four teams were very close to each other, so the difference in the finals scores in the assessors’ scorecards for the top teams was very small. One of the teams from RFTA - Daniel Mertsalov, Nataliya Kolesnichenko, and Vera Martynenko came fourth on the assessors’ scorecards for the sum of criteria (which included the logic, the depth and completeness of the analysis). At the same time, both the assessors and the audience were very impressed by the language and presentation skills of this team, and the RFTA team was specially noticed and commended for that.

 

In short, this round of the Contest will definitely be remembered for its unique atmosphere and intensity. Each participant gained great experience and valuable skills for future success.