First Podium Finish of the Year for JMSB

A team of four students from Concordia University’s John Molson School of Business (JMSB) finished in third place at the fifth edition of the National University of Singapore (NUS) International Case Competition. Rose-Lynn Youssef Boghos, Charles Lachapelle, Martine Lemire, Brinda Nandy and coach Cedrin Law represented JMSB at the competition. The event attracted 12 teams from Canada, the US, Europe, Hong Kong, Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. The third-place standing gave Concordia its first podium finish of the competition year.

The NUS International Case Competition is unique on the competition circuit in that the format is not communicated to participants in advance. Details about the format and structure are only revealed once students arrive at the event. This requires teams to be prepared for anything which adds to the challenge and excitement of the competition.

This year’s competition consisted of two cases. The first was about Inverted Edge, a startup in Singapore that provides a platform for independent fashion designers to market, sell and distribute their designs on a global scale. The teams were asked to provide a strategic plan to help the company enter China.

The second case was about Pour Un Sourire d’Enfant (PSE), a not-for-profit organization that works to combat poverty and provide opportunities to families in Cambodia. Teams were asked to propose social enterprise programs and also a model that would allow PSE to be financially sustainable as well as allow families who go through the program to become independent and empowered.

The teams who qualified for the final round only found out they were in the finals when they were called up to present their case. JMSB was the fourth and last team to present in the final round and with their strong recommendation and detailed implementation plan, won third. Coming in first and second place were the Hong Kong University and the NUS teams respectively.

The John Molson Competition Committee (JMCC) would like to thank coach Cedrin Law for his hard work in preparing the team for the competition and Tim Field, Alain Readman Valiquette, Matt Starek, Valentine Vaillant and Shireen Salehi whose feedback was instrumental to the team’s excellent performance.

The JMCC also thanks Mark Haber, head coach and advisor to the Competition Program, for his boundless commitment.

The Committee would like to extend its deepest gratitude to Exclusive Partner PepsiCo Foods Canada, Premier Partner Pfizer Canada, and Database Sponsor PODIO for their support and encouragement of the case competition program.

For more information about the competition, please contact the John Molson Competition Committee at info@jmcconline.ca .