USC Marshall Case Team Places 2nd in Singapore

September 3-9, 2018. National University of Singapore (NUS). USC Marshall's Case Team took second place out of 20 international business schools. Big deal! Plus, team member Caitlyn Huang took home Best Female Presenter! I'm humbled and proud.

Image courtesy of  National University of Singapore

Left to right: Alwin Ong Wei Ren (NUS ambassador), Brandon Kay '21, James Yun '19, Jiaxin "Claire" Lin '19, Caitlyn Huang '20, and me, Professor Hansen

Space Alien Calligraphy at
Singapore Chinese Cultural Center

This year's competition was broken into three parts:

• A five-hour case on the Chinese Cultural Center in Singapore, worth 30% of the final score. 
• A 24-hour case on the Bank of China's Singapore Branch, worth 70% of the final score 
• Presentation by five finalists 

Each team was placed by a random drawing into one of five brackets consisting of four teams each.

USC's bracket included University of Aukland, UPenn's Wharton School, and Corvinus University Business School in Budapest. USC's initial goal was to beat Wharton. Corvinus scored #1 in the five-hour case, Wharton 2nd, Aukland 3rd, and USC dead last.

We were all seriously depressed.

The day after the five-hour case was dedicated to "The Amazing Race," a kind of social media scavenger hunt that took teams all over Singapore to complete and post about various tasks. I never did figure out where all this posting was taking place. My students muttered "Instagram, professor. Don't worry, we'll share the photos and videos with you on Google Drive."

Social media challenge: "Take a picture in a Singapore back alley."
Note that even the alleys in Singapore are spotless!

Ambassador Alwin kept the team on the Amazing Race track, but then, as we all commiserated and bonded, we decided to stick together late into the evening and Alwin shared some of his favorite Singapore Spots with us, including Jumbo Seafood and the light show at Gardens by the Bay.

Alwin kept Team USC on track with a visit to a
Hawker Center in "Olde Towne" Singapore

I was the only one who had seen all four case presentations, so I shared some observations with my team and they ran with them, not only beating Wharton in the 24-hour case, but scoring first (this time Aukland was second, Wharton third, and Corvinus last), thus securing a berth in the finals.

USC Marshall as "YRN Consulting" in the Finals. Judges are introduced,
and USC starts its presentation at 4:21:30.

The judges for the finals are extremely tough, and include this notorious NUS faculty member Andrew Delios (right), who starts contradicting you and questioning you after you say, "Well, I --"... USC were not rattled and ultimately placed second of the five finalist teams.

One last thing: while the teams have many opportunities to get to know one another (ours became particular friends with the Berkeley and New South Wales teams), the advisors end up having a lot of fun together.

Here's a last photo from the gala final dinner featuring just some of advisors and my new pals: Clockwise around the table, starting on the left: Marielle Nilsen from BI Norwegian Business School, Jen Laurette from Queen's University, Smith School of Business, Keith Niedermeier from Wharton, Brian Burfitt from New South Wales, Chua Lily (doyenne of the NUS Case Competition and hostess with the mostest), Geok Teng Lau (case writer, retiring force behind the NUS competition and husband of Lily), me, Pieter Verhallen from Maastricht University in the Netherlands, Rene Gendreau from HEC Montreal, Miklos Kozma from Corvinus in Budapest, Ingrid Larkin from Queensland University, and Erika Walker from Berkeley.

Most of the advisors joined their students at mega international dance club Zouk afterwards, but what happens at Zouk stays at Zouk, so I'm not at liberty to divulge any details, except to say that one of the challenges of being an advisor involves students, stress, alcohol, and catching early plane flights....

Ethics Video

Professor Hansen reads from H.H. Dalai Lama's Ethics for the New Millennium