News Releases

Live case competitions key component of KU MBA Program

Sunday, February 1, 2009

The KU School of Business prides itself on the variety and quality of the "experiential learning opportunities" offered Business students, both undergraduates and masters. Experiential learning occurs when Business students are given the opportunity to apply what they've learned in the classroom to real-life situations. Nowhere is this more evident than in the "live case competitions" for KU MBA students.

During the spring semester, the KU School of Business will be participating in a number of case competitions that will challenge its MBA students' ability to solve real-life situations that companies are facing today. This semester's competitions also include a trip to China for a major international competition.

During each of the eight competitionsto beheld this spring, teams of MBA students willwork with an issue presentedby executives from a company. These teams will have 24 hours to develop a recommended solution, create a presentation that explains and defends their recommendations, and discuss how to implement their solution.

"The main reason we do these competitions is to provide an opportunity for students to apply what they are learning in class to real business situations," Chuck Krider, academic director of the MBA program, said.

Krider said that the companies also benefit from these competitions as they get good ideas that the company may not have considered from the students. "It's a win-win situation," Krider said.

The first competition of the spring semester was January 14-16 for first-year KU MBA students only. The host company was Freightquote.com, whose founder and president is Tim Barton, a KU Business alumnus and a member of the School Board of Advisors. "I'm really excited about hosting this competition. This is very cool!" said Barton as he shared his business case with the MBA students. For this competition, these first-year MBA students were provided an extra day to work on the case.

Being given an extra day to work on the case is not the norm for these competitions as MBA student David Linhardt will attest.He participated in a case competition last year. "We got the problem one morning, and were presenting our recommendation the next morning, 24 hours later. It was a very intense experience, and a lot of work goes on in a very short time period," Linhardt said.

Krider said these live case competitions are important because presenting a case to executives in their boardroom was more intense than a classroom situation.

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