Between October 24th-25th, 2014 our team of three from the M37 class at the Keio Business School participated in the Schulich International Case Competition (SICC) that was held in Toronto, Canada.
Schulich School of Business, the host university of the SICC and one of the Canada's top business schools, is an affiliated university in the International Program (IP) at the Keio Business School. On the 24th, the first day of the event, a networking luncheon was held with an industry panel including an executive from the company that the case was based on. On the 25th, 17 teams from 8 business schools that passed the preliminary round that had over 70 teams presented their case to a panel of industry judges.
The theme of the presentation was based on Corporate Responsibility of a selected company and asked us to come up with a framework to make this more efficient. Our team made a presentation based on Japan's traditional business model of "Sanpo Yoshi," meaning a three-way satisfaction of customer, company and society. Because the company in question was a resource development company, we added a fourth element into the framework, which was Earth. Our team narrowly did not make it into the final four of the competition.
However, we received positive feedback from the judges including comments such as, "a number of judges voted you as the top team, you were very close to making the finals" and "we hope that you come back next year to challenge yourselves again." Our team was also able to converse and connect with other international business schools including the winning team from the University of Western Australia. We also had the opportunity to learn and were inspired by the presentations of the other business schools.
Alongside attending the SICC event in Canada, our team had the opportunity to perform a company visit at a major Japanese company's office in Toronto. We were able to inquire about their business dealings and the North American economies as well as the state of the International markets. We also visited the University of Toronto and had the opportunity to exchange ideas with their MBA students. Overall our few days in Toronto were extremely valuable and productive.
This was the first time ever that a team from the Keio Business School participated in the final round of an International case competition outside of Japan. By fully utilizing what we have learned in our intense courses and by having countless hours of discussion among team members, we were able to compete with international business schools, something we feel that is difficult outside a full time MBA program. Not only did we have strong support from our fellow students, but visiting IP students from around the globe provided ample constructive feedback and gave us confidence going into the competition. Our goal is to take part in more international case competitions going forward, we will continue to focus on our studies to accomplish this.
Takahide Shinkai, Michael Shimizu, and Yoshihiko Sakamoto (1st year MBA Students)
