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| FROM Kellogg MBA Blog: Traveling to Thailand for my first business challenge |
![]() As natives of Brazil, Thiago Pinto ’15 and I want to give back to our homeland. Thanks to our time at Kellogg, we’re on our way to accomplishing that goal. We wanted to leverage what we’re learning at Kellogg to impact Brazil’s economy, and we think we can do that by transforming the country’s underserved recycling industry. That is why we created New Hope Ecotech, a B2B startup that aims to connect packaged goods manufacturers with waste collectors via direct servicing and tradable environmental securities. We recently pitched our company in the mai Bangkok Business Challenge in Thailand, and after finishing second in the competition, we’re ready to take what we learned and continue building a company we think will have a great social impact. To join the competition was not an easy decision. The competition is organized by the Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration, part of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. That meant we needed to fly for 24 hours and represent our venture with 12-hour jet lag, miss a couple of great classes and come back to midterm exams with some more jet lag. But every (sleepy) minute of the experience was worth the effort. We were able to receive constructive feedback from people who have diverse cultures and backgrounds. With that, we learned that a good business idea with true social impact can bring great minds together and overcome cultural and physical barriers. The mai Bangkok Business Challenge was not just a competition. It was a new venture pitch bootcamp, and it turned out to be a much bigger event than we imagined. The six final-round presentations were broadcast through a local channel called Money Channel and were available for live stream on the channels’ website. After the competition was finished, the school took all 16 teams on a boat cruise. To top it off, the award ceremony had a special guest: a representative of Thailand’s King ![]() As for the challenge, I have to talk about all the work we did prior to the celebration. We arrived in Bangkok on a Thursday at 9 a.m. We ran to the hotel, then to the school because we had to prepare our venture booth before noon. Then, after a photo shoot, we had some time to rehearse our pitch because the first session of presentations was that afternoon! We had the chance to receive valuable feedback from a five-person jury following that presentation.. After the opening ceremony, all 16 teams presented a 99-second pitch to the audience. The next day, thanks to the jet lag, we woke up at 4 a.m. and had enough time to adapt our presentation based on the feedback we received during the first round. We had an amazing Thai breakfast that was followed by the semifinal round presentation. During the afternoon, we had 30 minutes with the semifinal jury to receive more feedback! Twelve of the teams had to present again (for the third time in 24 hours) in the playoff round. Luckily for us, it was naptime. We were one of the four teams to go straight to the final round! Friday night was time to celebrate with a dinner filled with delicious food and Thai music. Saturday, the big day, finally arrived. Our final-round presentation was broadcast and we made it to the first runner-up position! The award ceremony was followed by a dinner cruise on the Chaophraya. And that is how those three days of “bootcamp” finished. It was already time to start our 24 hours of travel again. Khob khun ka (Thank you), Sasin! Luciana Oliveira ’15 is a second-year student in Kellogg’s Full-Time MBA Program. Earlier this year, she was named one of Kellogg’s 10 Zell Scholars, a program created to provide support for students looking to turn their startups into market- and funding-ready businesses. Filed under: Academics, Business Insight, Career, Student Life Tagged: B2B, Bangkok, Brazil, competition, entrepreneurship, Innovation, Startup, Thailand |
to the rest of you applicants out there! R2 applicants, you've got under a month now! T-minus 27 days!!
to the rest of you applicants out there! R2 applicants, you've got under a month now! T-minus 27 days!![/quote]| FROM Kellogg MBA Blog: Our journey to winning the Deloitte National Case Competition |
![]() Matt Heintz, Andry Lesmana and Bora Sekeral represented Kellogg at the Deloitte National Case Competition in January. Here, the three reflect on how their team came to be, what the competition was like and what they learned from the experience. Our original team was formed serendipitously and through a comedy of errors. Matt showed up to the kick-off meeting thinking it was just an info session. He quickly realized the competition was kicking off immediately and that our team’s school-wide presentation was due in two days. Andry and Matt pulled a team together within the next 12 hours, and off we went to beat the clock. We presented along with other Kellogg teams to a group of judges from the Deloitte Chicago office, where we were honored to take first place. Winning the school-level competition opened the door to compete with 14 other teams from top MBA programs across the nation. We were welcomed by relatively warm weather as we stepped into Deloitte University in Dallas for the National Case Competition. After a night of networking, the competition started the next morning with the case distributed to all teams at 8:30 a.m. Each team was assigned its own private workroom and had 11 hours to finalize its slide deck for submission. The case was a profitability/growth strategy for a startup called Quirky. Quirky is an innovative consumer goods company that aims to bring crowd-sourcing to product innovation. An inventor comes up with an idea, and a community of “influencers” helps evolve the idea into finished products. These inventors and influencers then keep a percent of the revenue when Quirky manufactures and sells the product. There were three rounds in the competition that saw each team present – using the same set of slides – to a panel of five to eight judges. Four teams advanced to the final round, where each had 15 minutes to present to a panel of judges that consisted of Quirky senior management, industry professionals and Deloitte partners, plus all the teams that did not advance. Teams were evaluated on four different categories:
![]() There were two key ingredients to our success: story and data. We carved out some time in the beginning to independently explore the problem and brainstorm solutions. To avoid anchoring on others’ opinion, we wrote down our thoughts and discussed them as a team to come up with a hybrid solution. Our solutions branched off the main theme of focusing on core business competencies and were supported by financial data that highlighted the top revenue contributors. An engaging storyline helps the audience understand why the problem occurs, how the solution plans to fix it and how the result ties back to stakeholder’s interest. One thing we saw is that taking calculated risks were key to winning in a competitive business landscape. One of our proposed solutions was radical and broke through business orthodoxies, yet that differentiated our team from the rest. We learned that combining out-of-the-box ideas with objective data could turn into a powerful weapon for growth. “For the final four presentations, that was the largest and most senior audience I had ever presented to,” Matt Heintz said. “I had always heard that business school changes you, but that was the moment I knew what that meant. “I was able to seamlessly and confidently present to individuals, something I couldn’t imagine being capable of as little as six months ago. I know it sounds silly, but I truly understood what ‘inspire growth’ meant at that point.” Filed under: Academics, Business Insight, Student Life Tagged: Case Competition, competition, Deloitte, Deloitte National Case Competition, Growth, student win |
| FROM Kellogg MBA Blog: There are no stupid questions. Just ask a Nobel Prize winner. |
![]() First-year student Rohan Rajiv is blogging once a week about important lessons he is learning at Kellogg. Read more of his posts here. In our first Microeconomics class this quarter, our professor spoke of her experiences presenting research to audiences that included Nobel Prize winners. She noticed that the Nobel Prize winners were most often the ones who raised their hands and asked questions. Some of the questions could be perceived as simple questions, as they occasionally sought to clarify some of the most basic concepts of the discussion. When she observed this pattern repeat over and over again, she realized it was that willingness to learn and dig deep that made the Nobel Prize winners special. They might not have understood the topic when they started, but they saw to it that they didn’t stay uninformed for long. Our professor’s message to us was to make sure we asked questions about any concept we didn’t understand in class. This is my third iteration of being a student, and in my quest to learn how to learn, I feel like I’m finally beginning to understand and internalize lessons like this. This is a trait I observed in top executives from my time as a consultant as well. They were very willing to look simple and ask questions around the underlying assumptions. And these questions often unearthed real insight. This lesson reminded me of the Mark Twain quote: “A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t.” You don’t often control your current level of understanding. But, staying at your current level of understanding is entirely your choice. If you find yourself wondering if your question is a stupid question, remember the Nobel Prize winners. Thanks Professor! Rohan Rajiv is a first-year student in Kellogg’s Full-Time Two-Year Program. Prior to Kellogg he worked at a-connect serving clients on consulting projects across 14 countries in Europe, Asia, Australia and South America. He blogs a learning every day, including his MBA Learnings series, on www.ALearningaDay.com. Filed under: Academics, Student Life Tagged: economics, MBA Learnings, microeconomics, Nobel Prize, Two-Year MBA Program |
Success stories and strategies from high-scoring candidates.