Who is the Winner? International Student Business Competition: A mysterious business case

We are pleased to be sharing the information that on November 6th and 7th 2023, the Department of International Business launched the first International Student Business Competition. The purpose of this competition was to work on a mysterious business case. 27 students of 14 nationalities signed up for the competition and 25 of them completed it successfully. Furthermore, five international professors from four foreign universities accepted the invitation and decided to come to Prague to become advisors to the student groups.

On the first day of the event, there was an afternoon opening ceremony that included a welcome drink, the presentation of a short mysterious video created only for the competition, the drawing of the groups, the assignment of the advisors and business cases to the drawn group. Every group received just one business case.

Each case was composed of a series of documents and financial statements and the groups were supposed to find out what was actually happening based on incomplete information and hints. A mysterious background directly or indirectly linked all five business cases. As early as the first evening, the composed student groups accompanied by their advisors started working. Some students worked almost overnight to find the right solution to their case. On the second day, the foreign professors became jurors of a panel that evaluated the quality of the groups´ defenses. The jurors then voted for the best group and selected four best-performing students from the non-winning groups. In the jury, one local professor, Dr. Petr Procházka, also participated.

The winning group was composed of five members: Nicolas Urrea Suarez, Nina Shamugiya, Emiliano Mesias Bolanos, Sai Veekshita Vinnakota and Illia Antonenko. The best-performing students from the non-winning groups were Christina Tanissa, Ahmad Ihab Ahmed Eid, William Jonathan Bowen and Wouter Smulders (the last two are our exchange students). All these students were invited to a dinner in a classic Czech restaurant.

The organization of this event would only be possible with the arrival of the foreign professors. They were:

Smaranda Vancea (Universitatea Dimitrie Cantemir Targu)
Eglė Vaičiukynaitė (Kaunas University of Technology)
Asta Tarutė (Kaunas University of Technology)
Kelaniyage Shihan Dilruk Fernando (University of Szczecin)
Pradeep Kumar (University of Applied Sciences Nysa)

The other persons were of a great help to the main organizer and these were: Ing. Jana Krebsová, Karolína Nováková and Josephine Marchi. The whole event could take place thanks to the financing by the Faculty of International Relations.