Third-year Industry Analysis students are getting set for the live-case study this week. From left are students Robert Person, Kristine Beverlein, Mathew Banfield, Austin Jones, and Quentin Klopp.
Live case study puts 36 teams in competition for local business enterprise
What: Live case study (open to media)
Who: Third-year Faculty of Management students and HuStream
When: Wednesday, April 3, 8 to 10 a.m.
Where: Engineering, Management and Education building, room EME 2141
Note: Final team presentations Thursday, April 4, 4:30 p.m., in Arts building ART 366
Hundreds of third-year Faculty of Management students at UBC’s Okanagan campus will be thrown into the real world of business this week as they participate in a highly competitive case study. Their challenge is to come up with and pitch a winning idea for a local company’s product launch.
Norine Webster, who teaches Industry Analysis to all third-year students in the Faculty of Management, says the live case study gives the students a real-life business scenario with HuStream, a local video-production agency that needs a business strategy to launch a new online product.
The 36 student teams each have a limited time to come up with a viable solution.
“It is a very competitive day, with students integrating and applying just about everything they have learned in their third year,” says Webster. “They will need to apply in-class knowledge and use a bit of information from every class they have taken this year, including human resources, information technology, marketing, research, and communication to come up with a winning solution.”
HuStream executives met with the Faculty of Management students Tuesday and presented their need for a winning strategy to introduce and market a new product. On Wednesday morning, all participating teams have an opportunity to ask the company executives critical questions in a forum that will help students glean information from questions posed by rival teams.
On Thursday, each team has less than 20 minutes to present their strategy to a panel of judges made up of Management faculty. The top two teams from each flight advance to the semi-finals; by the end of the afternoon, three finalists will present their solution to the final panel of HuStream’s executives and UBC faculty.
“This all about providing our students an opportunity to put what they’ve learned this year into a real situation,” says Webster. “It goes beyond course content — they must use very practical business skills they’re developing for research, decision making, risk and implementation assessment, and of course presentation skills. And the company has been very clear: they are hoping to use some of these solutions in their business practice.”
Peter Matejcek, co-founder and CEO of HuStream, says it’s an honour to be selected to participate in the Live Case Study.
“These students have been jacked into the internet since they were two, they don’t know a world that is not digital. They are young and bright, and they will bring a fresh perspective to our marketplace,” says Matejcek, “Talk about an amazing opportunity for a tech start-up like HuStream to have hundreds of Gen Ys explore how they see the market using our technology. You bet we plan to use the stuff they come up with.”
This is the second time UBC’s Management students have participated in a live case study. Two years ago, Disney’s Club Penguin was the local partner that needed help. Webster says Disney was so impressed they invited the final groups to present their solutions a second time to executives at Disney headquarters via Skype. The live case study resulted in a strong partnership between Disney and the Faculty of Management.
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