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- Category: Telferimpact
Place à la jeunesse is an outstanding experiential learning opportunity for Franco-Ontarian high school students organized by the Telfer School of Management each year.
It is a program for young students with an interest in business that consists of an in-class component focused on key business topics followed by, as central component, a case competition. The Jeux du Commerce inspired competition has been bringing together Franco-Ontarian youth since its first edition in 2004. The competition hosts over 90 students from French-language high schools across Ontario, aged 15 and 19.
The program also serves as an opportunity to promote the pursuit of post-secondary education in French and at the same time enriches the students' business knowledge through an immersive and extraordinary hands-on experience.
The students learn a lot in class, but the opportunity to practise theoretical skills in an environment that encourages creativity, innovation and critical thinking is the main value-add in their academic development.
Participating students are also given the opportunity to compete for scholarships they can earn for their future studies at the University of Ottawa.
The Competition
The Place à la jeunesse (PALJ) competition creates an environment that encourages participants to grow and share their ideas, contextualize real issues, and solve them.
Traditionally, the competition is divided into the following academic sections:
- Marketing
- Accounting
- Entrepreneurship
- Debate
Students are given three hours to analyze a case study, find the primary and secondary problems, come up with solutions, prepare their answers and present them to a panel of judges.
Their presentations are evaluated by judges from the community, the Telfer School, and/ other local professionals. Judges provide critical feedback to each team so that members can improve and develop their skills beyond the competition.
“It feels good to see our students engaged, full of energy and finally having experiences,” says Shelley Ryan, a business teacher at E.J. Lajeunesse High School, who saw her students take part in the 2021 edition.
Linked with Experiential Learning Goals at Telfer
At the Telfer School of Management experiential learning is an important component of any student’s journey. Experiential learning is deeply integrated in our programs through our active learning courses, learning lab and co-op program amongst other opportunities. Students benefit greatly from these learning experiences and can use them to develop and explore new subjects, valuable at any learning level.
For Franco-Ontarian students, Place à la jeunesse is a great early experiential learning opportunity to participate in that offers a taste of what to expect during their university studies. It also has the advantage of being offered in Canada’s capital, the heart of bilingual Ontario. It’s one of the few experiential learning opportunities of its kind.
Moreover, an Ontario government curriculum document on experiential learning states that this approach allows students to develop transferable skills such as oral expression, critical thinking and the ability to summarize large amounts of information.
During the Place à la jeunesse competition, students can display their theoretical knowledge and apply it to real situations as well as gain peer recognition and possible scholarships.
How to Get Involved
If you or someone you know attends a French-language high school in Ontario, this unforgettable experiential learning experience is a chance to prepare for university life and develop a network of contacts with students and community members throughout French Ontario.
Participating students can win university scholarships. This fall, winners of each section received University of Ottawa scholarships worth a total of $58,500.
If you are interested in getting involved with the organizing committee, there are opportunities for this too. “We’re always looking for people who passionately care about education, entrepreneurship and French to help us organize the event,” says Catherine Gingras, Telfer BCom student and chair of the organizing committee for the 2021 edition.
Learn more about Place à la jeunesse and get involved in the next edition.
- Category: Community Engagement
The MBA Student Association (MBASA) at Telfer School of Management came up with an event that is the first of its kind – a small and medium-sized (SME) Consult-a-thon focusing on providing fast-paced, strategic solutions to businesses in the local community.
Over the course of the weekend from July 17th to 18th, 46 participants including students, business representatives, Telfer faculty and experts, put in a total of more than 170 hours of case-cracking to help these businesses prosper and give back to the community. “It truly represents what the Telfer School of Management is all about - bringing together the creative energy and expertise of students, local businesses leaders, and industry experts to focus on a business challenge faced by local organizations,” said Professor Catherine Elliott, Director of the Telfer MBA program.
Revisiting Case Competitions Framework
The event has completely redesigned the usual case competition framework, with an emphasis on collaboration, community value, and social good. “When we came up with this framework, we believed the emphasis should be on quick solutions and community value rather than competitiveness.”, stated, Karthik Chivakula Venkata, one of the 6 organizing members of the event and a Telfer MBA student. He added: “We also believed that this would provide participants with a sneak peek at real-world business challenges as well as an opportunity to put their course learnings and talents to the test.”
Developing the Right Challenge
Due to the pervasive pandemic, today's SME enterprises confront some very genuine and severe issues that require innovative solutions. To be successful, both businesses and students require assistance and direction from local business community supporters.
With many local businesses showing interest in being part of the Consult-a-thon, the MBASA organizing team had to interact with each of the business owners to understand the cases better. Following a thorough brief, the team collaborated closely with the business owners and members of the MBASA’s executive team to co-create case documents that showed extensive, accurate, and up-to-date market information.
Intensive Case-Cracking
The Consult-a-thon included 4 teams composed of 4 students that would come to know of the businesses and the cases only during the event. The team then had to work on the cases provided by each participating business at different time during the event.
The most anticipated part of each business case was the case cracking. Each team had 4 hours to tackle the business document. In the first hour, the teams got to discuss their questions and ideas with the business owners and consulting experts for a proper understanding of the situation and problem statement. By the end of the allotted time, the teams had to share their final ideas and solutions to the business owners and expert panelists.
At the end their presentations, the panelists will provide feedback on the teams' presentations and insights on how to implement their ideas better.
For its first edition, the Telfer MBA students had the chance to work with dynamic local start-ups such as:
- Shyne Eyewear, a small Ottawa social enterprise run by Enactus uOttawa which manufactures and sells sunglasses and blue-light glasses created from 100% recycled materials;
- Ekidna Sensing, a biotech startup located in Ottawa that builds technology solutions for the legal Cannabis industry;
- Empower'em is a grassroots social enterprise focused on providing a community and support to women of colour in order to help them develop their leadership skills, build confidence and achieve their personal and professional goals.
All in for local businesses
Since it was not a traditional case competition, the panellists evaluated the ideas qualitatively, not quantitatively. The rubric focused on the clarity of identification and articulation of challenges, level of thorough analysis, creativity and feasibility to provide feedback, and recommendations to the participants.
The real winners of the Consult-a-thon were – the local businesses, of course! Students gained valuable experience and received feedback on their ideas and presentation skills, but the businesses were the real winners, leaving the event with new insight and actionable solutions for their business challenges. Professor Elliott added: “It was a winning partnership for all, bringing innovative and practical solutions to these local businesses. Congratulations to the MBASA and the participating students! I was so impressed with the students’ initiative in launching this first-ever Telfer SME Consult-a-thon.”
A Successful Event
The event also got praises from the principal beneficiaries. “We needed a strategic direction and these presentations provided us with new creative ideas on how to tackle this problem. The recommendations the students provided were actionable and we are happy and excited about the entire event,” said Alexander Parsan, Project Manager at Shyne Eyewear, and Telfer BCom Accounting student.
Nicolas Boileau, CEO of Ekidna Sensing, also appreciated the outside expert view that the Telfer MBA students brought in. He looks forward to the next 6 months to one year to see where the company will move towards with the new ideas and strategy he collected over the weekend.
The committee is already planning the next edition of the event, which will take place in 2022 in a much bigger scale with even more local organizations. Any local businesses and students from all horizons with an interest in being part of this incredible initiative are invited to contact the MBA Student Association to discuss possible participation in next year’s competition via
Make Change: A Message That Resonates at the 6th Annual MBA Diversity and Inclusion Case Competition
- Category: Latest News
This year’s 6th Annual Diversity and Inclusion MBA Case Competition hosted at the Telfer School came to a close on March 5th, where 10 teams competed against one another. Held in close partnership with Export Development Canada (EDC), Deloitte and Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), the competition lasted over the course of 2 weeks, where participants had to examine emerging challenges and propose solutions pertaining to an assigned case on this year’s theme: Systemic Anti-Black Racism in the Canadian Workplace.
Throughout these two weeks, participants were periodically invited to attend interactive sessions with the competition founding The Deloitte Greenhouse team kicked off the opening day of the competition with an Interactive Live Session, adapted to the case topic, to engage participants intellectually, emotionally and physically and set them up for success in cracking this year’s case.
A week later and after submitting each of their executive summaries on the case subject, the teams were invited to a Diversity Experts Session hosted by EDC, an organization that leads by example when it comes to fostering an inclusive culture.
It was then showtime as the second phase of the competition took place when participants had to put together a video presentation. Each presentation would present the teams’ innovative ideas to tackle this important challenge of inclusivity in the workplace, in hopes to convince the expert panel of judges on the creativity, feasibility and pertinence of their solutions on:
How Canadian corporations can create an environment in which employees can thrive and reach the following targets:
• 3.5% of executive and board roles being held by Black leaders by 2025; and,
• at least 5% of new hires being from the Black community by 2025.
A Message of Fostering Change
As the case competition neared the end for another year, the closing remarks resonated with the attendees during the heartfelt speeches from this year’s year’s special guests from the The BlackNorth Initiative: the Executive Director, Dahabo Ahmed-Omer, and the Executive Chairman and Founder, Dr. Wesley J. Hall. The case question was directly inspired by The BlackNorth Initative pledge to end anti-black systematic racism.
“Bring us to a place where Black Canadian can prosper and are given an equality of chances,” said Ahmed-Omer, hopeful that a competition like the Diversity and Inclusion MBA Case Competition can help shape the roles of our future leaders.
Ahmed-Omer added her thoughts on systemic anti-black racism in the Canadian workplace: “In order for us to see the problem, we need to acknowledge it, for all of us to act on it."
From virtual to international
In the midst of the current pandemic, the sixth edition of the competition went online, opening the gates to yet another first for the competition: the world. This year’s case competition welcomed 10 MBA teams, including 8 teams from across Canada and 2 international teams: FIA Business School from Brazil and Barna Management School from the Dominican Republic. Even though the case portrayed a Canadian reality, all could agree issues around anti-black racism in the workplace are global and the judges all agreed on the overall quality of the strategies and presentations offered by all participating schools. Our Telfer Nation representatives, Sinatrio Raharjo, Krishna Venkatasubramanian, Roxy Lu and Sushant Garg, better known by their collective pseudonym Awesome Possum during the competition, was led by Coach Sylvie Albert, Lead of Internationalization and New Initiatives at the University of Ottawa.
At the end, Beedie School of Business of Simon Fraser University (Team InCahoots) brought home first place with a solution that was described by the judges as a compelling case for an important issue: “They showed a willingness to take a step ahead in developing a solution to restrict current gaps in the workplace, while presenting a strategy not just based on subsidies solutions, but filled with bold ideas.” stated Justine Hendricks, Senior Vice President of Sustainable Business & Enablement at EDC. Hendricks presented a shared $5,000 prize to Team InCahoots composed of Bessie Chow, Kelly Woo, Viksit Jain, Raymond So and Coach Shelley Graham.
1st Place - $5,000 | Beedie School of Business - Simon Fraser University |
2nd Place - $2,500 | John Molson School of Business - Concordia University |
3rd Place - $1,250 | DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University |
The steering committee is already planning the 7th edition of the event, which will take place in early 2022. Any organization with an interest in diversity and inclusion issues and topics is invited to contact the Telfer Graduate Programs Office to discuss possible participation in next year’s competition at:
- Category: Telfer Announcements
Telfer School of Management MBA alumni, Soumi Sarkar, Anjaney Agashe, and Arun Subramanian performed excellently at the 8th annual Schlesinger Global Family Enterprise Case Competition (SG-FECC), placing second on the podium in the Graduate Studies category. SG-FECC is a case competition hosted by the University of Vermont, in order to prepare participants for unique and troublesome issues related to Family Enterprise. Participants are expected to solve complex cases as well as present their solutions over the course of four rounds of competition. The competition was exceptionally held online this year.
According to the team’s coach and Telfer Full Professor of Family Business and Entrepreneurship, Peter Jaskiewicz, despite Telfer’s first time competing in the SG-FECC, they were held in very high regards by the organizers of the event, stating that “our team rocked although we lacked the experience of prior SG-FECC competitions and the track record of a long-standing family business curriculum at Telfer.”
Moreover, business owners and consultants who worked as judges at SG-FECC, highlighted on many occasions how well the Telfer former students performed, which Professor Jaskiewicz believes is a good indication that the MBA program is performing well.
“It has been very rewarding for me to coach them because they are smart, hard-working, and fun”, stated Jaskiewicz. “I enjoyed seeing them excel at analyzing complex family business problems and offering intriguing solutions to address these problems.”
“Moreover, they have shown a great team spirit from the time they took my class ‘Advising Family Business’ to their final presentation at the case competition: they always worked smoothly as a team, behaved very professionally, supported each other, and had lots of fun along the way. Well done & chapeau!”, added Professor Jaskiewicz.
See the full recording of the award ceremony here.
For more information on the Schlesinger Global Family Enterprise Case Competition click here.
- Category: Student Voices
One thing to know about me is that I am a big fan of case competitions. I have participated in over seven of them during my four years at Telfer, and I still think that's not enough.
I am especially biased towards the Jeux du Commerce (JDC) as that was the first competition in which I participated, and it is my favourite by far. I loved my experience so much that I decided to become one of the two coordinators for the 2021 edition, along with my good friend, Scott Dowell. Together, we have the goal of making sure that 2021 is Telfer's year!
For those of you who have not participated in a case competition, here's the elevator* pitch. You arrive at a hotel with 50 to 100 other students from Telfer, all wearing the same exclusive clothing to proudly represent your school. There's an opening ceremony, a celebration, and then you rest before the start of the competition the next day. There are three main disciplines in which you can compete:
- Social: An opportunity for you to showcase your creativity and teamwork through various challenges;
- Sports: Where you can compete in a sport chosen by the organizing committee;
- Academics: Your team resolves a real-life case study presented by a sponsor.
Throughout the weekend, when you're not competing, you cheer on the other teams, network with sponsors, and make friends with students from the other participating schools. Finally, the weekend ends with a gala where the sponsors and organizers present the winners for each category.
Watch the recap video to see it in action!
Join a Case Competition
Now that you have a good idea about what a case competition is like, why should you compete in one at Telfer? While there are countless reasons, I've summarized them into three:
1. To network:
Participating in a case competition is an opportunity to network like no other, and as business students, you should already be aware that networking is one of the most important things you can do at university. I truly believe that I would not have had the same success finding a job if it was not for the connections I made early on at Telfer, and many of those connections came from case competitions.
First, a delegation is like a family, and through your practices, social events, delegation meetings and the competition itself, you form a bond with the other students. These students can easily become your best friends and even a reference for a job opportunity.
Second, a lot of companies sponsor case competitions to network with students and recruit them for jobs. While you're there, whether you are part of the social, sports, or academic team, you have the chance to network with these recruiters and share your resume. If you're cracking an academic case, the sponsors will see you in action, and they may choose to invite you to a VIP cocktail event to get to know you better. There have been countless instances of students finding jobs at case competitions; you could be next!
2. To develop skills
When you participate in an academic case competition, you are often assigned a coach, and you conduct frequent practices to prepare with your team. These are great opportunities to improve your case-cracking skills, which are extremely important when trying to get a job in competitive fields such as consulting. Many firms such as Deloitte and Accenture have a case study as part of their interview process, so having weeks of practice with feedback from an experienced coach will provide you with an edge over your competition.
Other skills you will develop that are even more important, in my opinion, are presentation skills, time management, and teamwork. These three skills are crucial to have when applying for a job. This is yet another way that participating in a case competition can help you find your dream job.
3. To have fun
While the two reasons above are nice and crucial to be successful business students, I wouldn't have gone through 7 competitions if they weren't fun. Some of my best memories from my university career have been at these various case competitions. Whether it be watching the Telfer ultimate frisbee team win the bronze final at JDC 2019, leaving the presentation room with my teammates Josh and Nafim after having presented our solution at JDC 2020, or seeing my friend Bobby win the MVP award at HM 2019, these are all moments I'll cherish for a very long time.
However, my experiences at case competitions have not all been jolly. Unfortunately at JDC 2019, I dislocated my kneecap and tore my MCL within 30 minutes of the start of the first soccer game we played. That meant that my tournament was over, and that I had to spend the rest of the day at the hospital. I think that the fact that I still love case competitions that much after going through this proves how fun they are!
Overall, I have given you three good reasons why you should sign up for a case competition at Telfer. In my opinion, just the amazing “swag” items that you get should be enough to convince you, but if not, this article should do it.
I'm currently the VP Information Technology and Marketing on the organizing committee for JDC 2022 and, let me tell you, we're planning something big for everyone. After a very challenging year, we're going to light the fire within all the delegates, and you won't want to miss it!
Follow the Telfer Competitions Committee and Jeux du Commerce on social media for more information and updates.
*Disclaimer: All competitions are different, but I am sharing my experience of a traditional, in-person format to keep it simple.
- Category: Student Voices
If you’re a Commerce student or a student at the University of Ottawa, at some point, you are likely to have heard about JDCC (Jeux du Commerce Central).
Some of your friends have probably mentioned how much fun they had at the sports games, competitions, or dance ceremony on their JDCC trip.
But, what is JDCC?
Jeux Du Commerce Central (JDCC) is a regional business case competition where students from business schools across Canada compete to win. JDCC is organized by the Canadian Association of Business Schools (CABS), a parent organization that works with the business student associations at each Canadian business school.
At these competitions, member schools of CABS select students at their prospective schools to coordinate a delegation. At JDCC, the Telfer School of Management competes alongside 11 other Ontarian schools including Lazaridis School of Business and Economis from Wilfrid Laurier University, Lang School of Business and Economis from the University of Guelph, Sprott School of Business from Carleton University, and more. Every year, one of these member schools hosts the competition, allowing competing students to visit campuses across Canada. Students can compete in either the academics, sports, or social categories.
How the Competiton Works
In the academic competitions, every school sends a team of three students to compete against others in specific business categories such as marketing, accounting, strategy, human resources, entrepreneurship, and more. To compete, the teams of three have three hours to conduct a case resolution, which they then present to a panel of judges. The presentation component is 20 minutes, and the question period is another 15 minutes.
When all teams have presented, the judges (usually acquired through sponsorship) decide which schools will place first, second, and third for each category. During the awards ceremony, CABS announces the winners for each category, and also gives out individual and full-delegation awards.
In the sports competitions, teams of eight compete in an assortment of sports such as basketball and spikeball. In these competitions, points are awarded to delegates for performance and for delegations whose non-sport delegates watch the game and cheer on their fellow teammates.
In the social competitions, teams of four participate in random challenges at different points in the day. These challenges include improvisation, dances, debates, surprise case resolutions, and more. In these challenges, points are awarded for enthusiasm, sportsmanship, and quality of makeshift costumes.
This competition takes place annually in January over four days. The last two locations were the University of Guelph (Guelph, Ontario), and Brock University (St. Catharines, Ontario). At the last competition, Telfer brought a team of 46 students, and won three podium awards: Human Resources, Debate, and Wildcard.
VIP cards are individual recognition awards that are awarded to the best presenters. The recipients of these cards are often selected by the judges, and those who possess a VIP card participate in an exclusive networking event.
Outside of competitions, schools also participate in other recreational activities such as social events and dances.
At the Telfer School of Management, the JDCC delegation is organized by the Telfer Competitions Committee (TCCT). TCCT recruits the students, facilitates practices and coaching, and orders merchandise for the team. TCCT also hosts the annual Telfer Internal Case Competition, which is a good opportunity to search for new Telfer JDCC academic members into our regional competitions.
If you are interested in developing your presentation skills, making new friends, and competing to win, JDCC is an opportunity you do not want to miss!
Read more about how Telfer performed at the last JDCC here.
Ask me questions on my experience here.
- Category: Student Voices
Whether you are planning for Intopia or looking for information on how to work better with a team online, this blog should be more than helpful. Originally, I was going to write a blog about how to survive Intopia Online. My team did a great job, and we finished in 1st place as a wholesalers team. In March 2020, Sam Sutherland wrote 7 Tips and Tricks to Winning the Intopia Business Simulation, so considering how recent and similar it would be to mine, I instead wrote about the online Intopia experience and how you can use that to your advantage.
Before we move on from the topic of how to do well within Intopia, I would like to add in four more tips that should be considered but are not covered within Sam’s blog;
-
When you have extra cash laying around, invest it within Home Office securities.
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Know your inventory and how much you can sell. Do note that some numbers vary and seem to come from a distribution, so follow what you learned in your statistics class and take a sample size of more than 5 (our team ended with 30 samples every few periods).
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Do not get a line of credit, it can break teams easily.
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Green production really helps when you need to stand out amongst the other teams.
1. How to Prepare Your Team
Similar to a well-oiled machine, your team should also be able to work smoothly. Although, breaking that initial barrier and becoming comfortable with each other can be difficult, try to discreetly create a few icebreakers to make the meetings more organic, comfortable, and fun. Meetings happened at least once a week thanks to the group discussions during every class.
Talking to each other and asking questions such as how our week is going, or asking if something interesting has happened since seeing them last breaks down the professional barrier and allows everyone to feel relaxed. You have more than six weeks to get to know your team, and you’ll be spending countless hours under high-stress, and with little sleep, but also having a great time.
As you get to know everyone, you’ll start to understand their strengths, interests, and weaknesses. With this knowledge, you should be able to break people into groups; we had one person for Management (inventory included), one person for Marketing, and three people for Finance and Accounting. To be honest, our team was built around this distribution of work. We then loosely set up seconds-in-command and thirds-in-command for Marketing and Management. "Loosely" as in they should know how things work and are able to answer questions when the expert is busy or away. This splits up the amount of work when one section has a higher demand and even more importantly allows everyone to know what the other sections are able to do and are doing. It is forced communication, but in a smooth, organized way and less stressful way.
2. How to Work as a Team Online
Within the trials, we practiced as many key elements from Intopia that we could. The trials are where your team learns how to work together like the gears within a machine, for online Intopia simulation. Soon your team members will find where another cog might be needed and do their best to fill in there. As more questions are answered, your team becomes more comfortable, the cogs turn smoothly, and you’ll find yourself similar to a well-oiled machine with little bits of sand that the oil will eventually get rid of.
As for the other things that we worked on, we constantly changed and updated the Excel sheets to work more efficiently so that each team member could read what was needed, highlight expected demand, easily find needed information and more.
We made sure that each of us were familiar with more than one “job”, or needed role in the simulation. We tried out different theories, some that worked better than others. When we worked together, it was always on mini-teams so that we can find what is need, and we can freely communicate as if we were in-person. In other words, we video called each other as much as possible, to the extent of more than 28 hours between all 9 periods of the Online Intopia Simulation.
Anytime you are doing something for such a long time, it is possible that the team is bound to make some mistakes. If you can, fix them as soon as possible, and next, tell your team. In video calls, you can tell your team while you find and fix the mistake, and if you can’t fix it, share this with your team. They can sometimes adjust for the mistake or find ways to soften the negative effects on the team as a whole.
Lastly, mistakes are made, and miscommunication can occur. For instance, believing that you built two more sales offices for the last period at the end of the game, ordering for that amount, and finding out that this is not the case, and now your team has an excess of $300,000 of each product, the team can find out where the extra product will likely be sold above the expected amount within minutes of the deadline, of course securing your team first place.
In addition, you are likely to end a call tired and knowing that in 6-8 hours you’re going to have to wake up and continue with the work and video call, but morale is key. Try your best to get along with your team, because if your team is discouraged or feeling down, they are also likely stressed. We always tried to break up the work with downtime, laughs, and jokes. This can also allow the mind to unravel and ease tensions.
When the going gets tough, call your professor. Our professor worked wonders by giving us confidence with our own plan and easing tensions. Lastly, have all your meals planned in advance so you can eat quickly, if needed.
3. How to Build Relationships and Secure Better Deals with Other Teams
One of the biggest qualities that our team was very proud of ourselves for was for being ethical and fair to the other teams. This goes a long way in such a short simulation. Phone calls and video calls work wonders as well; you are able to secure a deal with another team much faster, and, at least for us, make more favourable deals than the ones we text or email to the other teams. Calls can also add a sense of urgency to the deal, as they are under more pressure to respond. Silence is good sometimes to help add pressure to the other team, so you can use that to your advantage as well. If you can keep up, use it. In addition, teams with a bigger network are more likely to perform better.
I hope that this blog helps your team work well together for the Online Intopia simulation. Even if you don’t have the Intopia simulation just yet, hopefully it was helpful in provide ideas for maintaining your teams’ relationship. If you have any further questions, feel free to contact me on LinkedIn.
Here are some additional resources for working online:
- Category: Student Voices
Occurring each semester, the Intopia Business Simulation allows for Strategic Management (ADM4311) students to compete in a simulated marketplace with two specified products. Teams must make hundreds of decisions which require expertise in accounting, finance, marketing, and management. The goal of this blog is to provide you with some helpful tips and tricks to help you in both your preparation for the simulation and your strategy during the game.
PREPARATION
1. Read the Manual & Watch ALL of the Preparation Videos
This may seem self-explanatory, but the best teams have a very deep understanding of how the simulation works, as well as how their decisions will impact their outputs each period. The manual details how different numbers on your balance sheet and income statement are calculated, which becomes extremely important when you begin calculating your cash flows each period.
2. Treat the Practice Round Like the Real Game
There are two different ways to approach what the simulation calls the “Market Trials” (A fancy way to say practice round). The first is to try as many different strategies as possible to see what your team may excel at, and to learn about all parts of the game. The second is to decide what your team’s real strategy is, and to use the Market Trials as practice for the actual simulation. Both approaches are valid, but no matter which one you choose, it is important to take the trials seriously. You should meet with your team before every decision, as you would during the simulation, and try to finish near the top of the leaderboard. Having a good reputation heading into the game can help your team secure loans and long-term contracts as teams are more confident in your ability to be profitable.
THE REAL GAME
3. Make Relationships Early
One of the most important tips to winning the Intopia Business Simulation has to do with how you interact with other teams. Whichever strategy you decide on, you are going to need to work with all different types of companies (teams). Having contracts signed for multiple periods not only eases your team’s stress, but also puts you in a much better position for the later periods as you start needing to either buy or sell more inventory due to increases in production capacity and demand.
4. Think About Leveraging Your Position to Start the Game
This strategy doesn’t necessarily apply to all company types, but if you are a producer looking to expand your operations as fast as possible, taking out a loan from another team to start the game can be a great idea. My team was an X producer that had the capital to build 4 plants in period 1. We decided to leverage ourselves, allowing us to build a fifth plant which gave us more inventory than all other X producers for a large portion of the game. In the Intopia Business Simulation, aggressive teams are rewarded as all teams are profitable, for the most part. Therefore, the teams that expand the quickest get a leg up on the competition strictly due to their higher inventory volume.
5. Start Paying Dividends as Early as Possible
The majority of your grade for the Intopia component of ADM4311 comes from your “Value Added” compared to other teams within your chosen strategy. Paying dividends directly increases your “Value Added”, and it can lead to money being reinvested into your company. You should become profitable by period 4, which is when you should begin repatriating your earnings from your areas of operation in order to pay dividends. This is another key tip to winning Intopia, and you should be paying higher dividends each period until you reach the maximum amount ($99,999,999). However, be sure you never decrease your dividends paid from period to period as it can lead to a lack of confidence from your shareholders.
6. Know your Numbers
This goes back to your preparation, but it is super important that you understand exactly how your cash flows work. Once you have a solid grasp on how much cash you have each period, you can start planning ahead to build plants or sales offices. Your team should have detailed spreadsheets that calculate your break-even point, projected cash flows and projected earnings, among other things. Receiving outputs each period that match your projections not only eases your stress, but also puts you in a great position for the upcoming rounds.
7. Be Aware of Tax Implications
Different Areas have different tax rates, and moving money around can help limit the amount of earnings you lose to taxes. Also, it can be beneficial to determine how you sell inventory based on tax rates (higher priced products get sold in areas with lower tax rates), in order to send more income to retained earnings each period.
I hope this blog helps you in completing, and hopefully winning, the Intopia Business Simulation. If you have any other questions feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.
- Category: Student Announcements
Telfer School of Management Bachelor of Commerce students Joy Xu, Leah Salzman, Lina Salama and Madison Woo, better known by their collective pseudonym “Employees of the Month” at the competition, brought recognition to the program by winning 1st place at the 5th annual Diversity and Inclusion Case Competition. In all five years since the competition’s founding, a Telfer team has won first place each time, with “Employees of the Month” representing Telfer at the fifth edition. The competition took place last Saturday, February 29th, at Export Development Canada (EDC), one of the founding partners of the event.
The group’s ideas, which the judges found to be refreshing and grounded in the reality of today’s world, earned them a shared $5,000 prize that was presented at the evening awards gala. This was the first year that the competition was open to not only MBA students, but also to third and fourth-year undergraduate students. The latter showed they were up for the task, as two of the four finalist teams came from undergraduate programs.
A new edition this year in the spirit of renewal and innovation, this fifth edition of the competition started on Friday evening, February 28th, at a networking launch event at Bayview Yards. An interactive activity hosted by second founding partner, Deloitte, was definitely the highlight of the evening, according to many participants. The Deloitte Greenhouse team offered the students who were present an opportunity to attend four workshops that were each as useful as the next. Participants were invited to discuss real diversity and inclusion issues both in the workplace and in everyday life.
For this year's competition, which could count on the support of Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) for the first time, the participants received the case analysis two weeks in advance, which marked a new direction for the case competition. Twelve teams from 10 different universities across Canada had to develop a strategy to recruit, retain, and develop employees of visible minority groups working for the Bank of Canada (the official author of the case study) by highlighting barriers to equal access.
According to Professor Catherine Elliott, Director of the Telfer MBA program, this new format enabled the teams to bring more depth in their analyses and increase the quality of the cases in the first round of presentations. “The bar keeps getting higher!” said Catherine; “Diversity and inclusion is now part of CEOs’ vocabulary, and is receiving more and more visibility as a topic in businesses. We can expect to host more teams and businesses involved in this subject, as a result, for the years to come.
The Competition
The purpose of the first part of this case analysis, which was presented before an audience for the first time this year, was to select four teams for the final round. This is where Joy Xu’s team stood out from the crowd, and this time the finalists had only 75 minutes to prepare before tackling a new problem posed by the Bank of Canada regarding employment equity data.
“Everything we learned in case resolution was really helpful to us, and each of us was able to put our own resources to work for the team, to determine exactly what employees needed”, Joy told us in the moments following the “Employees of the Month” victory. There was also the fact that two team members had to join the team just a few weeks before the start of the competition, and so the four of them were particularly pleased with this excellent outcome.
Another Telfer team, composed of Aditya Bhatkal, Allison Caverly, Camille Sigouin and Lisa Filter, all four MBA students, also performed well on the first round, but were unable to qualify for the final. The classmates were still happy to have had the experience and pleased with their presentation to the judges.
Competition Winners:
1st Place: Telfer School of Management, uOttawa, BCom
2nd Place: Schulich School of Business, York University, MBA
Tied for 3rd Place:
Memorial University of Newfoundland, Undergraduate; and
DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, MBA
The steering committee is already planning the 6th edition of the event, which will take place in early 2021. Any organization with an interest in diversity and inclusion issues and topics is invited to contact the Telfer Graduate Programs Office to discuss possible participation in next year’s competition at:
- Category: Student Announcements
The Entrepreneurs’ Club (TECDE) has been hosting the Elevator Pitch Competition as a part of Global Entrepreneurship Week for over a decade, showcasing top talent and innovation among uOttawa student-entrepreneurs. This year’s competition offers ten companies, competing in two divisions, an opportunity to pitch their business ideas for a chance at a prize pack valued at over $35,000; with $20,000 in cash prizes and over $15,000 in additional services including law (offered by LaBarge Weinstein LLP), accounting (offered by Logan Katz) and incubation space (offered by Invest Ottawa).
Throughout the years, the competition has grown both in popularity and in awareness amongst the Ottawa business community. Back in the first few years of the competition, there was one category which was only for companies that were already established. When Professor Stephen Daze, Entrepreneur in Residence at the Telfer School of Management got involved in the event, he pushed for the formation of a second “Validation” category. Professor Daze recently explained the evolution of the competition, and shared that the new category “allows the opportunity to promote that it's important to validate your ideas before you just create a business. By showcasing the top five companies at this stage, [we] demonstrate to everyone else in the room what they need to be doing as next steps for their business ideas.”
Over the decades, TECDE, the Telfer School of Management, and the competition’s sponsors have been able to help countless companies launched by uOttawa students. Two of these companies include Hoppier, co-founded by Telfer alumnus, Cassy Aite, and Welbi, founded by Telfer alumna, Elizabeth Audette-Bourdeau. These two bright co-founders will both be joining the 2019 competition as judges.
Aite, co-founder and CEO of Hoppier shared that: "the Elevator Pitch Competition gave Hoppier the opportunity to connect with a network of people and receive funding to help the company grow in a time when we needed it most. Hoppier was able to grow into a self-sustaining company, achieving over 6 figures in sales in its first year. Today, 2 years later, Hoppier employs over 20 people and is used by companies across Canada and the United States." The ability to create an impact in the lives of students and their companies over the years is the reason why TECDE continues to host this flagship event and strives to make improvements year over year.
In addition to the two category prizes, TECDE will be featuring a People’s Choice Award where the audience will vote on their favourite startup to be awarded a $2000 cash prize!
Join TECDE on Tuesday, November 19th in DMS 4101 to hear the 2019 finalists pitch their ideas and support our uOttawa student-entrepreneurs.
- Category: Student Announcements
The Telfer School of Management, in partnership with Export Development Canada (EDC) and Deloitte, presents the fifth annual Diversity & Inclusion Case Competition. The competition will be hosted in our Desmarais Building and at the Export Development Canada office in Ottawa from February 28-29, 2020.
During this case competition, teams examine emerging challenges and propose solutions pertaining to issues of diversity and inclusion in organizations. This innovative competition exposes future leaders to business change and growth opportunities, due to the diverse nature of the Canadian workforce. Sixteen teams from universities across Canada will be competing to solve a unique case for the chance to win $8,750 in prize money.
While most teams participating will be enrolled in an MBA program, we also encourage 3rd and 4th-year undergraduate students in business/management to register. One team of 4 members is permitted per university. Teams will be registered on a first come first serve basis.
Register here to save $200 when you sign up before November 15th, 2019.
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The following article was written by a member of our student community. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Telfer School of Management. For more information or to flag inappropriate content, please