They may not have actually been running a multi-million-dollar company, but a group of Capilano University students certainly felt like a million bucks after taking first place in a recent post-secondary business competition.
CapU sent a junior and a senior team to the 26th annual Western Canada Business Competition in Kelowna March 20 to 23. The juniors beat out all their rivals to win the award for best overall team and each of the four members also took home individual awards for their respective roles (best
marketing, best finance, best operations and best human resources).
The competition, which involved several months of preparation, saw each team manage a company via a simulation program and make decisions regarding investments, manufacturing, marketing and more. One of the requirements was to submit a strategic plan to a Dragon's Den-style panel of judges.
"For our strategic plan we decided to invest heavily in innovation and as a result we had to actually generate money through a combination of debt and equity," says business instructor Andrea Eby, who coached the winning team.
Participants watched the results of their decisions unfold live and CapU's junior team ended up ahead by more than $100 million in sales.
"Basically our strategy just played out really, really well. And you never really know, because you don't know what the competition is doing," she says.
Eby is a marketing professional and says the management simulator gave her students a genuine taste of what it's like to work in the business world.
"It's reality. And I think that is what's so great about it," she says. "These are really rigorous business management skills that you get from this."
