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John Molson Cup

// January 3rd, 2010 // MBA

Tomorrow I’m taking the train to Montreal to compete in the John Molson MBA International Case Competition. It’s a week long competition that draws teams of MBA students from all over the world. Each team is made up of only four students from each school.

Each day, your team is put in a room and given a case to analyze that could present a variety of business challenges including HR, PR, marketing, finance, corporate social responsibility, expansion issues, etc. You’re given three hours total to read the case, analyze it and form recommendations. You have to do this without the aid of any computer, research materials or internet devices — you have only the knowledge that you bring into the room to aid you.

After three hours is up, you present your case to business executives and answer their questions. The judges rank your analysis and presentation and you accumulate points to win your division or maybe the entire competition.

Okay, so maybe that’s not the most relaxing way to spend a week off work, but it’s a challenge I’ll only have one chance in my life to do (you can only compete once) and I wasn’t going to pass it up.

Wish our team luck! We are: myself, Susan, Liz, Haran and coach Dale Carl.

Jan. 10, 2010 UPDATE
I’m back in Toronto after a week in Montreal for the John Molson International Case Competition. Our team did very well, finishing second in our division. We were one teeny point away from semi-finals, but I’m SO pleased with how well our team worked under pressure and presented, that I’m very happy with our performance.

My favourite case from the competition was the live case, which this year was a marketing/strategy case on the Montreal Canadiens hockey team. Canadiens owner John Molson was there to present the case to us, so it had significant press coverage (see a video news clip about it here). We did extremely well in this case with a 9 to 2 win, tying the team from University of Calgary, who won the entire competition (they were awesome, and deserved to win).

It was such a great experience, I’m blown away at how awesome it was, how great my teammates were, how great the people were from the schools from all around the world and how challenging the competition was. It was like an MBA crash course in a week. I’m SO happy that I was selected to be on the team and compete. If anyone reading this is thinking of going next year, I highly encourage it.