International Collegiate Business Strategy Competition (ICBSC) is a globally influential business strategy competition with the longest history in the world. It challenges participants’ ability to apply their business knowledge into the changing business environment. Participants are required to operate their business using a simulation software and write business plans and annual reports as well as presenting their executive results to the board of directors.
The 52nd ICBSC, hosted by California State University, long beach, was divided into two phases: the 10 weeks’ remote phase and 3days’ on-site intensive phase which was located in Anaheim, California. ICBSC began on February 2nd, 2016. The first quarterly decision was due on February 8th. Following the first quarterly decision, there was the remote operation lasting for two months. As the mangers of the company Cheung Kong Limited, the students were also responsible for determining their goals for the future four years with a Goal Attainment Report (GAR) and preparing their business plans both of which would be shown to the board of directors in the on-site intensive phase.
After the two-month remote phase, he students had a two-week break to prepare for the competition after which they would head to Anaheim, California for the on-site intensive phase and the presentation to the board of directors. We looked deeply to the executive results for the past three years and summarized our business strategy. Then, we wrote the annual report for Fiscal Year 5 and made a part of the PowerPoint slides that we planned to show to the board of directors.
On the arrival in Anaheim, STU students attended a welcoming party and communicated with other participants. Later, they started the two-day super busy on-site phase. During that phase, quarterly decisions were due every two hours, and STU students were supposed to build their slides according to the executive results. At the same time, judges would also came to headquarter room to communicate with STU students. By communicating with the judges, STU students needed to answer some questions of the judges and figure out the judges’ expectations to the management team.
On the last day of the intense phase, STU students delivered a presentation on the executive results for the past five years and prospects and goals for the future. After the presentation, the judges made some comments and feedback on STU’s students’ presentation and strategy. Judges were amazed at our detailed and professional presentation and amazing operation results of STU. Meanwhile, judges had pointed out that some language problems in the multi-communication and expression and taught us more skills in operation a company in reality.
In general, the whole process of ICBSC was quite time consuming and required participants to invest a lot of their energy on it. STU’s students concluded two reasons of winning the first runner-up: teamwork and stable executive results. First, STU’s team had work hard to figure out the detail of competition and worked hard for over two months as a team. Also, the team of Year 2016 had received valuable advice from teams of STU which had participated in the competition in the last few years. Second, STU’s team had maintained the highest stock price and stable executive results since the competition began. On the other hands, some companies once had the most outstanding performances.
Unfortunately, their executive results acted like a roller coaster. Meanwhile, STU’s team of Year 2016 made good use of previous written report and did well in their written report including the business plan for Year 4-7 and Annual report for Year 5. Last but not least, STU’s team were grateful that Shantou University Business School offered us with a chance to compete with those excellent participants from other universities in the world.
