The Corvinus University of Budapest team beat two of the world’s top 10 universities in the Marshall International Case Solving Competition: the National University of Singapore, ranked eighth in the QS World University Rankings, and the 10th-placed University of California, Berkeley.
Corvinus was represented by Anna Kálmán, Noémi Kopka, Alexandra Pongrácz and Tamás Gáspár. The competition, which took place in mid-February, had variable task completion times to develop a solution to a complex business problem, one lasting five hours and another 24 hours.
The shorter case focused on the market strategy for a digital transformation consultancy to ensure radical growth. In the extended exercise, a football club’s fans had to be encouraged to interact more digitally, and the club’s brand had to be internationally recognized. The solutions put forward by the Corvinus team came first in their respective divisions in both cases.
“We benefited greatly from the competition by being taught a thoughtful system at Corvinus with a wide variety of case studies. For the consulting firm case, for example, our team developed a client acquisition strategy for the Asian market with a manufacturing and retail focus, based on an analysis of the external environment,” said team member Kálmán.
“I was extremely pleased to receive feedback after the final that our team’s solution would be taught by a prep teacher from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, both in terms of accuracy, depth and feasibility,” said the team’s coaching teacher Miklós Stocker, the head of the Institute of Management at Corvinus University.
“This also shows that students interested in business education can get world-class knowledge in Hungary,” added Stocker, who also runs the Case Track business case competition at Corvinus.
In the multi-round student competition, the Corvinus team was the only one to qualify for the final five with a 100% score, finishing in a respectable third place behind teams from Emory University in Atlanta and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
The Hungarians also beat the Rotterdam School of Management and the University of Hong Kong Business School in the final. The format of the finals was unique; instead of the usual presentation and question-and-answer session, the team had to give a half-hour presentation in which the jury could stop the team at any time after five minutes and ask questions about the solution.
Corvinus describes itself as Hungary’s leading university in economics and the social sciences. The medium-term objective of the Maecenas Universitatis Corvini Foundation running the university is to become Central Europe’s best higher education institution in these fields. The university currently has almost 10,000 students, including 2,000 international students. It has close links with more than 200 partner universities worldwide. Corvinus regularly achieves high rankings in international higher education listings. Its business and management program was ranked first in the region in the Eduniversal 2019 ranking. Its master’s in management and organization has been ranked among the world’s top 100 business schools in the Financial Times’ Master’s in Management ranking since 2005. The Corvinus University of Budapest is the only university in Hungary with two international institutional accreditations, from the London-based Association of MBAs and the U.S.-based professional and accreditation organization the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of June 28, 2024.
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