Students from the Okanagan School of Business ranked third in a field of 30 colleges and institutes at the seventh annual Vanier BDC Marketing Case Competition recently in Montreal.
The Okanagan College team consisted of third-year bachelor of business administration students Emily Johnson, Gavin MacVicar and Breanna Retzlaff, coached by Rick Appleby.
In the competition, each team had to take a real business case, analyze it in less than three hours and prepare a 20-minute presentation.
The first day’s case focused on a start-up board shop business in Calgary. From the 30 participants, the judges chose six finalists, who were then presented a new case about the challenges facing a cabinet-making business in Lethbridge.
Finalists had to pitch their presentations in front of six judges, as well as more than 100 students, coaches and members of the public. Presentations were in the official language preferred by each team, making for an interesting multicultural experience.
“This was such a great experience to see and hear such a diversity of ideas,” said Johnson. “It definitely will enable me to do better in my courses and career.”
Each presentation was carefully monitored, with penalties being assessed if they were less than 18 minutes. Presentations were stopped at 20 minutes, whether complete or not. A five-minute period followed the presentation with judges peppering the students with questions.
“I listen to presentations from real businesses and startups every week,” said Steve Abrams, partner, IT Venture Fund at BDC Venture Capital. “As a first-time judge, I was very impressed with the quality of the presentations, especially given the students only have three hours to prepare.”
First place went to a team from Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ont., with second going to College Lionel Groulx-Quebec.
The host institute Vanier College did an exceptional job of conducting the event, says Appleby.
Okanagan College is hosting the Western Canadian International Business Competition, March 23-25 at its Kelowna campus. The competition involves student teams from across Canada actively running a fictitious company in a global industry using a computer simulation.
