Last week, a team of Penn State Smeal MBA candidates consisting of Tim Pace, Darius Adl, Jose Fanjul, Derek DeGroot, Felicia Li and Joey Ly had the opportunity to travel to Arkansas to compete in the 16th Sam M. Walton College of Business International Graduate Logistics Case Competition.

We were one of 12 teams participating with our competition consisting of BYU, Iowa State, Rutgers, Ohio State, University of Arkansas, University of Maryland, University of Minnesota, University of Texas at Dallas, University of Wisconsin, and two international teams, Chalmers University of Technology from Sweden and Darmstadt University of Technology from Germany.

Penn State was the defending champion, which certainly added pressure on the team. Among other colleges, University of Maryland and BYU were 2nd and 3rd place in the last case competition. Darmstadt University of Technology from Germany has been participating for this event for 11 years, and was considered one of our strongest competitors.

We arrived in Arkansas on Wednesday night and had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Alan Stenger, who was our faculty support. He gave us a lot of tips from his previous experience, which became an important factor of our success at the end. After dinner, we watched an introductory DVD together and knew our case was about bottled water.  Tuesday, we had a tour of a Walmart distribution center, Walmart Super Center and Nestle. We didn’t get the case until Friday, so we tried our best to ask questions which we believed would be beneficial for our case analysis. After the dinner, the team had a brainstorming session, talking about all the potential issues and solutions that we thought the case would cover.

The case was distributed at 7:30 am on Friday. The issues we had to tackle included the inefficient supply chain and inaccurate forecasting relating to Walmart’s private label bottled water, as well as sustainability issues. The problems were more complicated than what we had expected. We ended up finishing our presentation slides and initial rehearsal at 2:30 am on Saturday.

On Saturday morning after breakfast, we rehearsed twice and then headed to Sam’s Club where we would present our recommendations in front of 5-6 judges. The 12 teams were divided into three rooms, four for each room. Each winning team from that room would advance into the final round. Our recommendation was out-of-the-box and certainly risky, but we could tell that the judges liked our proposals. In the end, we beat the teams from the University of Arkansas, University of Maryland and Rutgers and advanced to the final round. The final round consisted of three teams, and the two others were the Swedish and German teams. The team had an outstanding performance in the final presentation and we ended up getting 3rd place.

This case competition was very well run and participation in this event was a valuable experience. I would recommend participation by Smeal students again in the future. We truly appreciate for this opportunity and we thank University of Arkansas, Penn State, and all others who supported us. A very special thanks Dr. Alan Stenger for his company and support to the team.

-Felicia Li, Penn State Smeal MBA Class of 2013

Last week, a team of Penn State Smeal MBA candidates consisting of Ross Bates, Neha Kala, Chris Passodelis, and Chad Guebert had the opportunity to travel to Pittsburgh to compete in the Katz Graduate School of Business’s first invitational case competition.

We were one of six teams participating with our competition consisting of MBA teams from Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business, Case Western’s Weatherhead School of Management, the School of Management at the University at Buffalo, and two teams from Katz.

The case focused on the Energy Industry and required the teams to make a strategic recommendation to a large energy provider whose future will be impacted by the retirement of aging coal power plants, stricter regulations requiring the increased use of sustainable energy sources, and the development of the smart grid allowing consumers to more closely monitor energy usage.

We left State College Thursday evening for the drive to Pittsburgh and Friday morning we were provided with the case, directed to a team room, and told we had seven hours to turn in the slides for our 10 minute presentation later in the afternoon.  Our team then went to work dissecting the case, developing our RMs and story-boarding our presentation.  After our presentation, we spent the next hour and a half wandering around the campus before returning for the announcement of the winning teams.

The Katz Case Competition was very well run, and while we were not one of the top three teams, participation in this event was a valuable experience and I would recommend participation by Smeal students again in the future.

-Chad Guebert, Penn State Smeal MBA ’13

READ THIS. All of it. I know it’s long, but it’s exciting and thought-provoking! Or you can skip to the last two paragraphs for key takeaways if you’re short on time. There. Now that I have the WIIFM out of the way, I’ll say this: though I have no experience to offer contrast, I can tell you that nothing about my team’s adventure with the Rutger’s Biopharmaceutical Case Competition can be regarded as ‘ordinary.’

The case was distributed on Friday, 11/02 at 9 am, exactly 7 days 8 hours before the slide deck was due. Having anticipated a technical, operations-oriented biopharma case, the whopping 23 page document we faced simply baffled us. It was bare of financials and packed with chronicles of the 2010 health care reform. Team challenges followed and on Tuesday night, without a single RM agreed upon, Julie Golofski and I found ourselves as the only two remaining team members. Rutgers required at least three. Refusing to concede, we took to the phones and employed Humphrey-esque tactics to persuade classmates to follow us down the rabbit hole. At the eleventh hour, Maryam Shahri came to our rescue and joined the team, truly delighted to be on board. Her positivity was a breath of fresh air. Onward, State!

The next two and a half days I can only describe as the most rapid, chaotic learning experience I have ever put myself through. When I was not in class (and maybe when I was), I was pouring over industry white paper reports. By Friday, I felt like Neo as he was first unplugged from the Matrix… “I KNOW HEALTH CARE!” But comprehension was only half the battle. Wanting to offer a unique solution, we used Professor Hambrick’s strategy implementation frameworks, STAR and PRoMPT. We considered these tools Penn State’s competitive advantage. Little sleep was had as we built and re-built slides.

With four hours on the clock, we departed for Newark on Friday afternoon. Julie took the helm while Maryam and I scrambled to complete the slides for our 3rd RM. 180 miles later, we found a Starbucks along route 80 (a miracle), magically threw together three more slides in 20 minutes (one of which literally read “2015 And Beyond: Issues Moving Forward!” – deemed ‘the catch-all money slide’), proof-skimmed, and submitted our deck precisely at 5:00 pm. But the worst had yet to come, as we had not foreseen the insanity that is Newark traffic. Imagine an etch-e-sketch road plan filled with one-way signs and thousands of angry drivers. It was an adventure to say the least.

Competition Day. Game Time. Start your engines. Whatever you call it, we weren’t ready for it. As we entered the presentation room, I could see our deck was already loaded … but the title slide graphics weren’t working properly (uh oh). Praying we wouldn’t encounter any major technical difficulties, I began the presentation with a text book Andy/Nancy intro, being sure to thank our sponsors and host. I won’t say the rest was a blur, but it went by so smoothly that I don’t know what else to call it. We finished right on time, fielded questions without flinching (one response was referenced in the judges debrief), and walked out thinking we might have actually placed.

We had the whole day to wonder, and eventually the wait paid off. Against Ivy league opponents, Ph.D’s, Pharm.D’s, former Medicare employees, and all other odds, the ragtag team from Penn State was awarded 2nd place.

Though highly irregular for an MBA blog, I wrote this narrative with the hope that it might communicate the value of this experience for Julie, Maryam, and I. Each of us learned something that we could have never gleaned from the classroom: an in depth look at a fascinatingly complicated industry, a leadership and teamwork exercise with rounds and rounds of forming, storming and norming, a test of resolve and commitment, and lastly, a lesson in how to fail. Of course, I’m not referring to the elusive 1st place. Rather, of the mistakes and setbacks we encountered. Each of these we learned from quickly, and made adjustments to in the moment. Personally, I owe my winnings to Julie and Maryam, for those 8 days of chaos taught me how to be a better teammate and also permanently altered my career path.

This experience would not have been the same were it not for the highly impressive accommodations of the Rutgers Business School. The entire event was coordinated and executed by the President and Vice President of the Pharmaceutical Management Club, Julie Oka and Chris Parker, two high-class and professional individuals. The RBS facilities were very impressive, almost equally so to the friendliness and welcoming attitudes of the RBS MBA participants and volunteers. The competition itself was judged by high-ranking industry executives who were more than glad to make themselves accessible to everyone. The winners table even had some good laughs with the Novartis rep after dinner! This event being only the FIRST annual Biopharma Case Competition, their efforts and success deserve many accolades and I’m certain their case competition will be successful for years to come. We can only hope that Penn State continues its involvement and one day brings home that elusive 1st place prize!

We are truly appreciative for this opportunity and we thank Rutgers, Penn State, the Class of 2013, and all others who supported us. A very special thanks to Jiawei Gu, Peter Wolkowski, and Tyler Ritchey for their time and insights to the case.

John Hanson, Penn State Smeal MBA ’13

“Thou dids’t mold us, dear old State.” – F.L. Pattee, Penn State Alma Mater

Two weeks ago, Penn State Smeal MBA and the Smeal MBA Finance Association sent down four of our own to compete in the 6^th Annual University of Maryland Smith Mergers and Acquisitions Competition. The M&A competition at Smith bills itself as a “one-of-a-kind” competition that happens to be both “grueling, yet fun.” Having only now, two weeks later, fully recovered (poetic license, but still), I can attest to the fact that they really are not kidding.

That being said, on Wednesday Oct. 24^th, I, Jack Greening (2^nd yr) , along with Binh “Janice” Nguyen (2^nd yr), Iqbal Aasim (1^st yr), and Anthony Cheng (1^st yr), decided to embark on the short, four-hour drive from our home at Smeal here in Happy Valley to the town in Maryland known as College Park. We left at 3pm, and in hindsight, I wish I we would’ve been able to get on the road a little earlier, and arrived at our hotel just after 7p. Having originally been from the Metro DC area but not been back in quite some time, I had forgotten just how cruel rush hour traffic on the beltway can be sometimes. With the reception starting at 7:15p, it took a little ingenuity on my part and a little help from my Dad, but we got there on time.

This is the point where I must say that Smith really nailed down pat the “host” part of being the “host school”. The food assortment they provided for us at Franklin’s for the reception and the planning and providing of breakfasts, lunches and dinners over the next 24 hours was simply fantastic. Hat’s off to them.

After the reception, we headed back to the hotel to get a good night’s sleep. Oh, how I wish I had gotten just a few more hours of sleep that night; I didn’t know just how badly I’d be needing it the next day and half.

-Jack Greening
MBA Class of 2013

SCMA Case Competition
On March 19, 2010, the SCMA hosted an internal case competition. The team of Renee Huber, Jyoti Sharma, Paari Rajendran, and Akshay Madane took first place. The second place team consisted of Christine Hubley, Jay Lu, Ana Salgado, and Ivan Zhankov. Click below to view each of the presentations and executive summaries from each team!

Presentations:

Team Huber, Sharma, Rajendran, Madane

Team Hubley, Lu, Salgado, Zhankov

Team Mezlo, Roberton, Votava

Team Tang, Caballero, Hu, Williambrown

Team Aggarwal, Ahuja, Goel, Gupta

Executive Summaries:

Team Huber, Sharma, Rajendran, Madane

Team Hubley, Lu, Salgado, Zhankov

Team Mezlo, Roberton, Votava

Team Tang, Caballero, Hu, Williambrown

Team Aggarwal, Ahuja, Goel, Gupta

The SCMA held its first annual case competition on Friday 26, March.  Five teams comprised of 1st and 2nd year Smeal MBA students competed in the all day event.  It was a great opportunity for us to sharpen our public speaking and analytical skills in a non-threatening environment while having fun.

Turnout was impressive and competition was stiff!  Five teams, each comprised of 4-5 Smeal MBA’s, arrived at the MBA Commons promptly at 8 AM to receive the case.  We then hunkered down in our team rooms to read through the case and start discussing.  This was a new experience for me, personally.  I had heard about case competitions before, but this was my first opportunity to participate.  I was not alone in this respect; the majority of participants were also novices.  This experience illustrated to us how to work through a complex problem in a limited amount of time.  Adding another dimension was the fact that most groups were comprised of team members who had never before worked together.  Time constraints pushed us to quickly develop team cohesion and focus in on the task at hand.

In order to develop a solution to the case, we had to draw on a multiple of disciplines.  Perspectives from strategic, marketing, and financial lenses were included in the each team’s presentation to complement basic Supply Chain Principles.  Every team presented a different perspective and created a unique solution to the same problem.

The day was not all work- we broke around 12 PM for a fabulous lunch provided by the SCMA from the “PitaPit” and took some time to socialize with other teams.  We also enjoyed dinner from “Qdoba” prior to the start of presentations.

Individual team presentations ran from 6 PM through 8:30 PM.  Each team was allotted 10-15 minutes to present, followed by a 10 minute Q&A session led by the judging panel.  Special thanks to all the judges/professors who stayed with us late into the evening- Dr. Terry Harrison, Dr. Andy Gustafson, Dr. Nancy Mahon, Dr. Bob Novack, and Dr. Doug Thomas.  The feedback received was very helpful!

Everyone (students and professors) put out tremendous effort to make the day a success.  The case competition was a wonderful learning experience and a lot of fun.  I believe we are all one step closer to being prepared for Exec Panel in May and new competitions in the fall!

Plans for next year’s competition are already in the works.  I hope to see you all there!!

–Renee Huber- VP Student Affairs, Smeal MBA Supply Chain Management Association