How To Win Business Case Competitions: The Secret Revealed

Back in the month of June 2020, when the nation was reeling from Covid-19 and B-Schools were gradually adapting to the online mood, one of our seniors in the XLRI ExPGDM batch introduced us to Unstop (formerly Dare2Compete) a platform where we could find the best case competitions from all over the world, and from various other B-schools in India. I was hooked. And my journey to winning case competitions kick-started. Here's how...

Case competitions are a chance to go beyond classroom learning and apply them directly to business situations. This was a fantastic opportunity not only to learn but also to validate that learning in real-time. I’d spend a little part of every day parsing through the competitions on the Unstop platform, trying to find those that caught my interest. I registered and participated in quite a few, my focus being only on getting incrementally better, learning a little bit more with every competition. 

Fail Fast And Fail Forward

The strategy was to ‘fail fast and fail forward’ – building a portfolio of failed attempts, each of which gave me important insight into the process. Then, as if by magic, the wins started piling up. It began with IIM Bangalore’s Numero Uno Strategy Competition, where I surprised even myself, emerging the winner among 1700 participants. Then NITIE’s Enpower 3.0, where my team (featuring two of my closest friends Suyash Kumar and Utkarsh Nagar) again emerged as the winners. IIM Rohtak’s Kaizen, IIM Calcutta’s OpsWorld, and IIM Indore’s Management Studio followed in quick succession, where I was either a winner or among the top 3. 

I lay no claims to have cracked the ‘case competition puzzle’. But I have gained some insights which might be valuable for those who want to know how to win business case competitions.

How To Win Business Case Competitions: The Two-Step Approach

Broadly speaking, winning case competitions is just a two-step process. The elementary step is solving the case which is followed by the second step- presenting the case. Let’s dive into the ins and outs of the steps in the simplest manner.

Part I- Solving The Case

There are various critical elements to solving the case, but the most important one is to understand the problem. This is absolutely essential, but a step that way too many people miss – we often go in with a pre-conceived notion of what a problem should be asking, without actually trying to gauge what is actually required. If a case has four requirements, write those four down, and solve for only those four at an initial stage. Any extra work done is a delighter, not a hygiene factor. Whoever solves the actual case problem best usually wins.

One popular approach that I too have found useful in solving case problems is what is popularly known in consulting circles as MECE – mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive. When a case poses a problem to you, try to create buckets of all the possibilities of the solutions so that nothing is left. This means smart categorization – a MECE list with 60 items will hardly be helpful, but a MECE list of 5 large buckets, with those 60 items distributed by functionality or importance, will help you drill down to a particular solution set. 

Always leave room for creativity and lateral thinking – if a company is trying to sell its tribal artwork, it of course makes sense to sell it direct to consumers through an online channel, but why not also collaborate with interior decorators or paint companies who could help push your product? If an NGO wants to promote hand-made coasters and mugs made by schoolchildren, why not try for a B2B or B2G tie-up as well? Think outside the box!

And lastly, never, ever forget the value of common sense. Frameworks, analytics, advanced strategies from the best textbooks will all fail to help you if you cannot keep common sense as the base for your problem-solving. Is your solution reasonable, feasible, affordable for the organization? If a startup wants to increase its branding, getting a high-profile celebrity is hardly feasible or affordable. First and foremost, make sure your solution makes business sense.

Part II- Presenting The Case

This has two elements – the actual case presentation in front of the judges, and the QnA section.

In the case presentation, I have seen too many wonderful presentations go awry because the speakers weren’t prepared with a script. With a severe time crunch and a lot of material to cover, make sure you have a script handy, which you can simply read off of to make your job easier. On each slide, it’s not a value add if you simply read the text out – the value comes in when you can pull the reader’s attention to your key insight – the part you want them to read. Talk about why a slide is there, and how it directly helps you solve the case. 

The QnA, of course, requires extensive preparation in advance. It is not only important to know your slides well but to know the implications of your actions or decisions because those will be asked. Judges want to know why you picked a particular solution, and how a particular strategy will pan out. It is also important to keep contingencies in place – if your chosen route doesn’t pan out as predicted, what then? Be prepared with your information, stick to your guns, but be flexible.

Case competitions are a wonderful opportunity to learn, and a chance to really add luster to your CV! I hope these points were of value to the young minds and answers their question about how to win business case competitions. Hope all of you have as much fun participating in these competitions as I did!

Here are a few articles that might pique your interest:

1. A perfect guide for handling questions after presentation | Ishita’s story from SIBM Pune
2. Challenge yourself with these B-school competitions this year
3. The only 11 tips you need to crack case competitions -By Ankit Thakur from XLRI (Part II)
4. What made PharmEasy emerge as the new king of acquisitions in pharmaceutical sector?
5. The difference between a CV and Resume you probably didn’t know!