MBA Students Continue Winning Streak at the International Collegiate Business Strategy Competition!
On April 16-18th California State University Long Beach sent two MBA teams to San Diego for the culmination of the 45th International Collegiate Business Strategy Competition and both teams brought back 1st Place Top Performance trophies. In the competition, student teams, organized into “worlds” take over the management of a simulated company competing against the teams of other schools in their “world.” During the remote phase of the competition which begins the first week in February, students make ten sets of quarterly decisions on all aspects of their company’s operations from research and development to training and marketing, finance, and production, which are then transmitted to the competition host computer. As in the real world, decisions made by the “company managers” determine the revenues, costs, and financial performance of the companies. During the onsite phase, ten additional sets of quarterly decisions are made and the final performance of the teams is determined. Included in the evaluation of the teams is the quality of two written documents, their Business Plan and Annual Report, the judges’ evaluation of their decision-making processes determined during visits to the “company headquarters,” and a team presentation to the judges serving as the Board of Directors. Our 2009 MBA teams were as follows:
Beach Mobile (MBA) – 1st Place Performance
Jefery Kusnadi, Justin Kleber, Sean Hernandez, Jimmy Nguyen
Global Solutions (MBA) – 1st Place Performance, 1st Runner-Up Written Reports
Nguyen-Khang Tran-Tan, Nui Valleta, Will Drover, Mary Ensch
This spring was only the second time that California State University, Long Beach had sent teams to the competition. In the Spring of 2008, Long Beach sent a team to the competition for the first time. Our MBA team (Long Beach International) made up of Elisabeth Gogel, James Lee, Natalia Staneva, Paul Antoine Briët, Sylvia Balint, and Vala Shahabi turned in an extraordinary performance for a first-time team effort and brought back a 1st runner-up trophy.
We are all excited about the winning tradition that the college has begun and look forward to many more years of outstanding teams and trophies!