Students conquer 2017 Leading Teams Case Competition

By: Katelyn Godoy
2017 Leading Teams Case Competition Winners

Winners Narit Tangsirivanich, Anil Lodhia, Sivakumar Muthusubramanian, Karthika Nair, and Nicholas Quigley

A stress test marked the culmination of the Leading Teams core course for One-Year and Cornell Tech MBA students in the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management: The Leading Teams Case Competition. The annual competition was held May 24 and 25 and is the capstone of the Leading Teams required course.

In all, 28 four- and five-member teams participated in the event, a time-pressured contest designed to test students’ abilities to lead and to collaborate within high-performing teams.

The teams had just five-and-a-half hours to analyze a hypothetical business case and to create a short video presentation outlining a solution. Six videos were chosen for the competition finals and shown to fellow classmates in the Leading Teams course. From these, students selected three finalists.

“It’s an opportunity for students to address team dynamics in a large-scale business proposal under severe time constraints, providing valuable experience for them,” said Isaac Smith, assistant professor of management and organizations, who teaches the Leading Teams course.

A panel of judges from Johnson, serving as a company board, questioned each of the finalist teams about their proposals and selected a winner and two runners-up.

Judges included:

Prize winners:

The team that took first prize—a dinner with Dean Mark Nelson—included:

  • Sivakumar Muthusubramanian, One-Year MBA ’18
  • Karthika Nair, One-Year MBA ’18
  • Narit Tangsirivanich, One-Year MBA ’18
  • Anil Lodhia, Cornell Tech MBA ’18
  • Nicholas Quigley, Cornell Tech MBA ’18

Members of the runners-up teams—awarded lunch at Taverna Banfi in the Statler Hotel—included:

  • Armstrong Mbi, One-Year MBA ’18
  • Nur Izzati Mohd Zabidin, One-Year MBA ’18
  • Aneesh Venkatadri Kode, Cornell Tech MBA ’18
  • Zachary Pardey, Cornell Tech MBA ’18
  • Ethan Green, Cornell Tech MBA ’18

and

  • Nicholaus Mills, JD/MBA ’19
  • Yashvir Singh, Cornell Tech MBA ’18
  • Anish Kumar, One-Year MBA ’18
  • Emily Foreman, Cornell Tech MBA ’18
  • Israel Krush, Cornell Tech MBA ’18

Congratulations to all on conquering the 2017 Leading Teams Case Competition!