Aalto’s student team successful in the The John Molson MBA Case competition in Montréal

The School of Business team, consisting of Casimir Kontio, Kimi Päivärinta, Nicky Tuominen and Valtteri Viitala (in the photo), took part in the case competition arranged by the John Molson Business School of the Concordia University on 1–6 January 2018 in Montréal. The responsibility for the preparation of our team fell on Christa Uusi-Rauva, a university lecturer.

'Our team did good work, and was the second best in its qualification group, but didn’t right make it to the semifinals. Nevertheless, many very good universities were left behind us. The best in this year’s competition was the team of the Irish Smurfit Graduate Business School, which was rewarded with a prize of $10,000', Christa Uusi-Rauva explains.

'It was marvellous to get involved in Canada. The case competition gave, above all, valuable presentation experience under pressure and opportunities for networking. During the competition, one could also see others' top performances from the perspective of the audience. I would recommend participation at least in one case competition during studies', Valtteri Viitala sums up his own feelings.

According to Christa Uusi-Rauva, case competition is a fine opportunity enabling one to apply and improve one's own competence as well as to create contacts with the business world and with students of other universities. For example, in Montréal, solutions are searched for cases of the Harvard Business School type as well as for one real-life case. Harvard cases belong to so-called traditional written cases, describing a challenge encountered by some company and looking for a solution. With real-life cases, a selected company presents some real problem from their own business, and the student teams develop various solutions for it. Each team presents its own solution to the jury composed of the representatives of the companies and gets feedback for it.

The next chance to challenge oneself in a case competition is offered in March, when the third Aalto’s internal Crossroads Case Competition will be organized. Students may participate either both in the Competition and the new Crossroads Case Competition course or only in the Competition. Registration for the course has begun at Oodi. The competition is for both bachelor's and master's students, who can apply for it in teams of four persons or alone, if one does not have a team, yet. If you want to participate only in the Competition, you can send a 1-page-long application to Christa Uusi-Rauva.

Further information:
Christa Uusi-Rauva
University lecturer
tel. +358 40 353 8328
[email protected]