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PHBS Wins the 2015 Sofaer International Case Competition
2015-06-02 14:29:29
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On May 20, 2015, the School of Management at Tel Aviv University hosted the Sofaer International Case Competition, where teams from around the world competed for a $10,000 Prize.


The roots of the Sofaer International Case Competition lie with the Eli Hurvitz Institute of Strategic Management, which since 2005 has held an annual case competition for students from Israel’s leading business schools. In 2011, Tel Aviv University internationalized the case competition by inviting MBA teams from leading schools around the world to participate. In this competition, student teams from across the globe must analyze an issue facing an Israeli company and present their own solution to a select panel.

Past SICC Winners for the last three years were:

2014: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
2012 & 2013: UCLA Anderson School of Management, USA.
2011Tel Aviv University's School of Management & Guildford Glazer Faculty of Business & Management, Ben Gurion University.

The full list of participating schools in this year’s competition is as follows:
 
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST)
Cambridge Judge Business School
Cologne Business School
Rottman School of Management
TAU School of Management
Wits Business School
Copenhagen Business School
Peking University HSBC Business School
 
This year’s case competition had PHBS representing Peking University. Our team was composed of four bright students: Andre Georgi, Francis Ma (Jifei Ma), Grace Peng (Wenting Peng), and Lucy Cai (Luxi Cai). The team was joined in their trip by Professor Kevin Chastagner, who had Andre and Francis in his Strategic Management class the previous year. This class is considered to be one of the most informative and innovative classes offered at PKU Shenzhen.
 
This year’s case centered around an Israeli start-up in the Operational Technology (OT) Cyber Security industry. The start-up developed a new technology that could revolutionize the OT field but struggles to convince customers about its importance. The teams had less than two and a half days to come up with an innovative solution to the start-up’s issue.
 
Despite the team’s wavering confidence about their performance during the Q&A section, PHBS was a judge favorite and proceeded to the final round.

In the finals, three schools fought over the top spot: Copenhagen Business School, Cambridge Judge Business School, and Peking University HSBC Business School. Ultimately, our PHBS team won because of their creativity and “out-of-the-box” thinking. This is a triumphant moment for our school and we are proud and delighted by our classmates’ performance.
 

We also take this chance to thank Professor Chastagner for his work in and out of class and his dedication to students’ success.
 
This is one more definitive sign that Peking HSBC Business School is a world class business school that is providing a strong business education in China.    
 
Written by Hicham Lefnaoui
Edited by Megan Mancenido