CityU team wins the third place in Virtual Case Competition 2020
A team of four undergraduate students stood out among 17 teams from Asia, Europe and the Americas, and notched up second runner-up in the Virtual Case Competition held by Universidad Panamericana, Mexico from October 5 to 7 October.
The competition was unusual that it adopted a mixed-team format. During the competition, each student had to solve two real-life business cases with the team members across different universities, countries and timezones. This was an interesting and challenging experience for them to engage in cross-cultural communication and learning. The overall ranking of a university was determined by the performance and accumulated points gained by its members.
The four students in the CityU team namely Ronny Cardenas, Martyna Chmielewska, Cheri Mak and Evelyn Rosari were selected based on their performance in the course CB3045, Advanced Seminar on Business Case Analysis, taught by Dr Zachary Leung from the Management Sciences Department. The course focuses on developing students' case solving, teamwork, and presentation skills. In addition to the course, the team has also gone through multiple training sessions on case solving skill and preparation of presentation slides.
Martyna appreciated the opportunity to work in mixed teams with students from other top business schools. “During both cases, we all leveraged our strengths and we learnt from one another. All students I have worked with were impressed by how well-trained the CityU students are, both in terms of case cracking techniques, as well as slide building,” she added.
Evelyn said the competition would be one of her highlights of this year, she said, “It was tough, but it was worth it. Working with cross-cultural teams was undoubtedly not easy, but I learnt a lot from the experience, especially on case solving approaches, presentation techniques, and new ways of thinking.”
Ronny shared that managing global teams was complicated, but through open communication and perseverance, the CityU member managed to succeed. He said, “This competition was a perfect opportunity to work with people from different backgrounds and countries, and learn different problem-solving styles. The participants were amazed by our work ethic and strong presentation and slide-making skills, which we couldn't have perfected without Dr Zachary Leung and his valuable training during the weeks leading up to the competition. I hope to continue learning from him and participate in more competitions in the future.”
Cheri said, “Although this competition lasted three days only, we couldn't have achieved this remarkable result without the weeks and months of case-solving training in the course CB3045 and from our coach Dr Zachary Leung, as well as the support from the College.”
Team advisor Dr Zachary Leung expressed appreciation to the supports of the College of Business, he said, “The College paid the competition participation fee, and hotel accommodation and meals for the students during the competition period. These supports were extremely helpful to the students, because they had to work at ungodly hours and stay awake for long periods of time, due to both the time difference and the nature of the competition.”