Media Releases

Rotman MBAs reach finals of international business competition in singapore

October 18, 2011

TORONTO, ON — For the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year a team of MBA stu­dents from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment made it to the finals of the Cer­e­bra­tion busi­ness com­pe­ti­tion orga­nized by NUS Busi­ness School in Sin­ga­pore.

While the team of Zee­shaan Mustafa, MBA’12, and Nina Krook, MBA’13 did­n’t win it all, they did man­age to place sec­ond in the com­pe­ti­tion held in Sin­ga­pore on Octo­ber 14 and 15. They were also the only team from any busi­ness school in North Amer­i­ca to be select­ed for the finals join­ing com­peti­tors from Lon­don Busi­ness School (2 teams), Indi­an School of Busi­ness, Chi­na Europe Inter­na­tion­al Busi­ness School, and the Indi­an Insti­tute of Man­age­ment, Indore. Mustafa and Krook pre­sent­ed a busi­ness plan for Ori­ca, an Aus­tralian-owned, pub­licly-list­ed glob­al com­pa­ny which is a man­u­fac­tur­er, sup­pli­er and ser­vice provider to the min­ing, con­struc­tion and infra­struc­ture indus­tries.

“It was a close com­pe­ti­tion and an excel­lent learn­ing expe­ri­ence for us,” say Mustafa, a stu­dent in the Rot­man Three Year Evening MBA pro­gram and Krook, a stu­dent in the Rot­man Three Year Morn­ing MBA pro­gram. “We would­n’t have been as suc­cess­ful as we were with­out the sup­port of Rot­man fac­ul­ty, in par­tic­u­lar David Gol­dre­ich, William Hug­gins, and Dan Richards who gave up part of their Thanks­giv­ing hol­i­day to work with us. We’d also like to thank Kin­ross Gold Cor­po­ra­tion for shar­ing their exper­tise on the chal­lenges that mul­ti-nation­al com­pa­nies face in the Com­mon­wealth of Inde­pen­dent States, which was a key part of our plan for Ori­ca.”

Cer­e­bra­tion 2011 com­bined ele­ments from tra­di­tion­al busi­ness plan and busi­ness case com­pe­ti­tions. Teams select­ed one of three firms and devel­op an action­able busi­ness plan that can be used by their cho­sen firm to address its busi­ness chal­lenges. In addi­tion, teams also had to focus their plan on one spe­cif­ic mar­ket. The com­pe­ti­tion start­ed on July 1 with 575 teams from busi­ness schools around the world. A team from the Rot­man Three Year Evening MBA pro­gram won the com­pe­ti­tion in 2010.

More details on the com­pe­ti­tion are online at www.nus.edu.sg/cerebration.

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to is redesign­ing busi­ness edu­ca­tion for the 21st cen­tu­ry with a cur­ricu­lum based on Inte­gra­tive Think­ing. Locat­ed in the world’s most diverse city, the Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables the design of cre­ative busi­ness solu­tions.  The School is cur­rent­ly rais­ing $200 mil­lion to ensure Cana­da has the world-class busi­ness school it deserves. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

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For more infor­ma­tion, please con­tact:

Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Office: 416–946-3818
mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca
Fol­low Rot­man on Twit­ter @rotmanschool