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 competition started in February. The first quarterly decision was due on February 3
rd. Following the first quarterly decision, there was the remote operation lasting for two months. As the mangers of our company Phoenix Town, we were also responsible for determining our goals for the future four years with a Goal Attainment Report (GAR) and preparing our business plans both of which would be shown to the board of directors in the on-site intensive phase. Though our stock price was not the highest, it kept rising during those two months, which fueled our catching up later.
After the two-month remote phase, we had a twelve-day break after which we 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 our arrival in Anaheim, we attended a welcoming party and communicated with other participants. Later, we started the two-day super busy on-site phase. During that phase, quarterly decisions were due every two hours, and we were supposed to build our slides according to the executive results. At the same time, judges would also came to our headquarter room to communicate with us. By communicating with the judges, we should try to figure out the preferences of the judges and their expectations to the management team as well. Therefore, after the visits of the judges, we edited our slides and optimized them according to the information that we had.
On the last day of the intense phase, we delivered a presentation on the executive results for the past five years and our prospects and goals for the future. After the presentation, the judges made some comments on our presentation and our strategy. One of the judges thought differently from our dividend policy. He thought we should keep our dividend steady, for unstable dividend would create unfavorable expectations. For example, we had gave out extra dividends because of the high profit of last quarter, however, the judge thought that this would make it hard for the investors to accept the lower dividends next quarter. The other judge suggested us to cover the profit margin in our presentation, because she thought that our pricing strategy might not be the best pricing strategy under those circumstances.
To conclude, the whole process of ICBSC was quite time consuming and required participants to invest a lot of their energy on it. To think back, I think there are two reasons that we won the first runner-up. First, we had the second highest stock price. Second, we had more stable executive results. Unlike us, some companies once had the most outstanding performances. Unfortunately, their executive results acted like a roller coaster. Anyway, we also wanted the best written reports, but we didn’t get it. We talked to the champion team, California State University Long Beach, and got their reports. We hope the team participating in next year ICBSC will make good use of it and try to win the best written reports. Last but not least, we were grateful that Shantou University Business School offered us with a chance to compete with those excellent participants from other universities in the world.
13Business Administration Mingfeng ZHUO
