Montezuma's Marauders Team Takes the Win in 22nd Annual MBA Case Competition

Montezuma's Marauders, represented by five Smith MBA students, won the top prize in the 2005 Smith MBA Case Competition this week. The team, also voted the audience favorite, received $1,500 and included Subho Goswami, Carolina Puerto, Bankole Osimokun, Aviral Singh, and Amy Williams.

The 22nd annual event brought students, alumni, faculty, administrators, and friends together for an evening of intense competition followed by an evening of networking and celebration. The event was held on October 19 at the Smith School's home, Van Munching Hall.

Finalists await the judges decision.

Undoubtedly the most anticipated event of the Smith MBA program, the case competition is a comprehensive test of strategic thinking and analytical skills for second-year MBAs. At the start of the competition, teams were given a general management case dealing with broad strategy issues facing Shiseido, a Japanese cosmetics company. Thirty teams -- consisting of four-to-five students -- submitted analyses and recommendations in written reports and oral presentations. Four teams advanced to the final round, which was judged by a panel of distinguished business leaders who played the role of the company's board of directors.

"To succeed, Shiseido needed to leverage its strengths across all its markets, and facilitate knowledge transfer between various units. This should have been supported by a flexible and agile supply chain, and a diversified workforce," said Aviral Singh, who was selected by the audience to receive the "Most Consulting Potential Award."

As teams crafted a comprehensive strategy for Shiseido to build its brand and revenues, they relied on skills acquired in courses like industry and competitor analysis, global economics, finance, marketing, strategy, and managing human capital teams. A differentiator in the Marauder's plan was their global strategy that didn't focus entirely on expansion in China.

"We looked at the case from a macro- and micro-level to come up with realistic strategies that were specific to each overseas market," said the team. "The limited amount of data in the case makes it hard to draw direct conclusions and forces you to make some assumptions during the analysis. Another big challenge is managing the time and meeting deadlines for deliverables, something that our team did quite efficiently," they said.

"Having a highly diverse team really made it an enjoyable experience. Our different functional areas helped us evaluate all the basics behind our strategy," added team members.

Final round judges included (pictured l to r)George G. Bitto, vice president and controller at Air Products and Chemicals, Inc; Matt Schuyler, executive vice president at Capital One; Robert E. Lee, CPA; Howard Frank, dean of the Robert H. Smith School of Business; and Anil K. Gupta, Ralph J. Tyser Professor of Strategy and Organization.

Other teams in the final round were: second place, Sustainable Solutions: Westley Alexander
Michael Carney, Julie Inlow, Aimee Newell, Catherine Sheehy; tied for third, Head Case: Anuj Desai, Dutch Fox, Andrew Roberts, Courtney Sheldon, Loren Zadecky; and tied for third, Los Lobases Consulting Group: Thomas Ficarro, Paul Lang, Christopher Lobas, John Semeniak, Stacey Vogel.

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