The following testimonial is from Justin Leuger describing his experience at the recent Bayer Case Competition for first year KU MBA students held at the North America Headquarters for Bayer Animal Health. Justin received the Case Competition Award for Best Presenter:
There we were – standing in front of five of the highest paid, most intelligent and most senior executives of Bayer Animal Health, about to deliver what, in theory, should be a top-shelf business presentation. The only problem: we hadn’t even rehearsed the presentation once. Not a single, solitary time. It was likely one of the bigger, if not the biggest, presentations of our lives, and we had only a vague idea of what we were going to say, who was going to say it, and how long it would all take.
Let’s take a step back. While you may be thinking, “What a colossal case of procrastination and ignorance,” there’s actually a perfectly legitimate explanation. Well, okay, maybe not perfectly legitimate, but reasonable nonetheless. The “we” I keep referring to is a group of four first-year MBA students, one being myself. The awkward scenario we found ourselves in was part of the 2008 KU MBA Bayer Animal Health Case Competition. Let me explain.
Every year, the KU MBA program arranges a case competition for first-year KU MBA students. Here’s how a typical case competition works at other universities: four-member teams of MBA students are given a written document about some business problem. The teams read the document and then have 24 hours to develop a cogent proposal that is delivered to a group of faculty members who may or may not have knowledge about the company or problem. These judges listen to the presentations and determine a winner based on presentation skills and the merits of the teams’ proposals.
KU does it differently – and much, much better. Instead of boring written cases, KU contacts big-name area employers and discusses the challenges facing their businesses and markets. Based on the feedback they receive, KU case competition organizers select the problem with the most appeal and appropriate level of difficulty. In doing so, KU MBA students have a rare opportunity to work on a real-world problem with big-time consequences. That’s not all.
The KU case competition organizers go a step further and invite a representative from the chosen company to present the actual case to the MBA teams. From that point on everything about a normal case competition holds true, except for one key point: The final presentation is delivered to company executives (usually in an enormous wood-paneled board room). These executives intimately know the industry, company and problem; they are true judges, in every sense of the word.
That’s what made our situation so precarious. This wasn’t a known group of faculty who might ask predictable questions. Oh no, these judges wouldn’t hesitate for a second to slam our ideas, call us out on a lame recommendation, or ask pointed questions about our analysis. We had to be at the top of our game.
Unfortunately, we weren’t.
That’s the beauty of it though, I think. The whole purpose of a case competition is to simulate real-world experiences. What could be more real than presenting to prickly executives, with inadequate preparation time, and under substantial stress? You couldn’t ask for a better glimpse into the future.
Bayer asked us a simple question: How can we sell more flea and tick products to first-time pet owners? It was a simple question with enormous implications. Flea and tick products generate more than $400 million in sales for the company. Needless to say they were eager to hear what we had to say.
For 16 hours straight our team researched, brainstormed, questioned, quantified, guessed, scrapped and ultimately developed a 23-slide PowerPoint presentation that distilled the day’s chaos. It was a lot of work.
So much work, in fact, that we didn’t have time to rehearse. After sleeping for four hours we were still printing the judges’ copies of our PowerPoint slides the next morning at 7:00 a.m.
We arrived at Bayer’s Kansas City headquarters just in time for the drawing determining the order in which teams would present. We pinned our hopes on drawing anything but the first slot, desperately wanting to go through our slides at least once together. We would have gladly taken the on-deck spot. I’ll give you one guess which position in the batting order we drew. That’s right, lead-off.
So there we were: 9:00 a.m., the first of four teams to present, standing in front of five Bayer judges and one KU faculty judge. No rehearsals under our belt. No idea how it would go. I think at that moment we all questioned why we had agreed to compete.
Surprisingly, we did really well. I was impressed; we seemed coherent, knowledgeable, and, despite having only four hours of sleep, energetic. Once we concluded our presentation, the judges deliberated for about five minutes, then brought us back in the board room for immediate feedback. It was great. We were able to hear about what we did well, what we did poorly, and how we could improve.
Before we left that day, one of the judges said he had already followed up on one of our ideas. How cool is that? After spending 16 long hours together our group had formed at least one idea so compelling that a multimillion dollar company actually took action on it.
Unfortunately, we did not win the overall competition. However, in pure irony, the judges selected our team as...the best presenters!
We couldn’t have bought a better experience.
Bayer Animal Health graciously agreed to extend a significant amount of resources (not the least of which, their time) to help put on this case competition. On behalf of all participating KU students I’d like to say, “Thank you for such a worthwhile and educational event.” We deeply appreciate it.
