McCombs TODAY

Four McCombs students who competed in the International Business Competition held at McCombs Oct. 31-Nov. 1, said they emerged from the competition with enhanced insights on how to be competitive in our increasingly globalized world order.

Hong Kong University emerged as the winner of the competition and the finalists were Concordia University, University of Alberta and Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Finance senior Wendy Lin, marketing senior Grant Rauscher, finance senior Eddy Fong and finance senior Chad Zidow, spent more than 50 hours together during the competition. Their charge was to help Dell Inc. identify an emerging global consumer market in China and satisfy that market based on the challenges faced in the current economic crisis.

Zidow, who has competed in four other case competitions on a local level, said courses in the BHP program, in which students work closely in groups to solve similar cases, were invaluable in preparing him for the international competition.

“Most case competitions are very finance and marketing heavy, so you’re always going to want to have some financial projections, and you’re going to want to have the assumptions that make sense from a real world prospective,” he said.

Zidow added that interacting with business students from South America, Asia and Europe helped him appreciate how the increasingly globalized business order has made it necessary for students to have a thorough understanding of other markets and be able to interact with people from different cultures.

“Globalization is a concept that every business student is going to be very well versed in and have some kind of personal connection to,” he said.

The team did not make it to the finals of the competition, but said they were encouraged by the praise they received from judges. Mostly, they said, they prized the insights they received by taking their education and talents to a global stage.

“Whether you win or lose, it’s a great learning experience,” said Fong. “The biggest rewards were the opportunity to work closely with brilliant and driven teammates, interact with people from a multitude of cultures and to push my analytical and creative and physical abilities to the limit.”