Day 3, 1st May 2009
0700-0900: Case Administering
After two days of informal activities, the case challenge finally began on Day 3 morning. The case was administered to the 16 teams in staggered timings, ensuring that all teams had an equal amount of time to work on the case before presenting their recommendations to the judging panel.
Darren(right) handing over their case pack to the team from the University of Hong Kong
Once the case has been administered, the 24 hours of case deliberation began in each of the teams’ hotel room. During these 24 hours, team were not allowed to interact with their team coach and could only rely on the information provided within the case and the Internet to help them prepare their recommendation.
The featured case company is Vestas, the world’s leading wind energy provider. In the case, Vestas was seeking a strategy to handle the unpredictable yet rapid growth in the current market conditions while containing the costs of globally delivering corporate IT services. Teams must play the role of consultants engaged by Vestas to present their recommendation to the CIO within 24 hours of case deliberation.
1800-1900: Meet-the-client Session
In order to mimic the actual consulting process, teams were given an opportunity to pose 2 questions each to the client of the case: Vestas CIO Torben Bonde. Each team could choose to send any number of representatives to attend this meet-the-client session, and all teams shared an equal amount of access to the information provided by the client during this session.
CIO Torben Bonde and Senior Specialist Niels Nielsen from CIO's Office fielding questions
Ms. Patchararak Thanasintrakul from Mahidol University taking the microphone
After 18 Hours of Case Deliberation
Following the meet-the-client session, all the teams headed back to their rooms to continue working on the case.
18 hours into the case deliberation, we paid a surprise visit to each of the teams and caught them in action at 1am in the wee hours of the morning:
A mini office set up in Universti Kuala Lumpur's room complete with a printer and a rim of A4 paper
The rest of UKL team busy working on their beds
The 3 gentlemen from University of Mannheim working closely together on a single laptop
Their room is rather neat and tidy as compared to the rest as we would find out later
The makeup-less ladies from Mahidol University immediately hid in one corner as soon as we walked into their room
After some persuasion from the photographers…
Unnawut Leepaisalsuwanna demonstrating his usage of the comforter to cope with the cold temperature of the hotel room
Aarhus Business School in the midst of a discussion as we walk into their room
Notice the cans of Red Bull to keep the team awake?
In the room next to Aarhus Business School's, we catch Stephen Brostrom of Copenhagen Business School peeling a banana
Like Mahidol University, the 2 ladies from Chulalongkorn University ran back into their room as soon as they opened their door and saw us but it didn't take much to get them to pose for a picture...
Warnich gives us his charming boyish smile
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The NTU team was deeply engrossed in their work when we visited them
Yong Hwee in deep thoughts with 2 laptops on the work desk...
Courtney Eng of Simon Fraser University busy working on a spreadsheet..
It's hard to tell in this picture but apparently the team ran out of writing paper and resorted to using the hotel windows
Leslie from The University of Hong Kong greets us at the door with surprise
His team mate, David, is taking a nap
His other team mate, Timothy comes out from the shower
Thea Nadine Ysach Valderrama of Ateneo de Manila University looks on as her 2 male companions lay asleep in bed
But not before they have finished some serious work, as one can see from the amount of post it notes pasted onto the hotel windows
Looks like they have achieved much progress in preparing their presentation slides before their nap
Indiana University giving us a warm welcome into their room
Joseph Castor was eager to pose for a picture
The results of their discussion...
Ankit from the SMU team tries his best to make a crying face impersonation
Organizer Wilfred (2nd left) has a short chat with the team from Hong Kong University of Science & Technology
The team seems indeed prepared for this case challenge!
The Sabanci University is having a short break with a bag of chips.
Our unannounced midnight visit ended at Sabanci University’s room as the team from Fudan University had already gone to bed by the time we went to their room.
Stay tuned as the presentation rounds and Awards Banquet will be featured in Part 3 of the Event Report!