By Richard Neal and his team, MBA Class of 2019
The IBM Georgetown Digital Case Competition was an international competition where nine teams were picked as finalists to present in front of IBM for the final round. This final round took place at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. on April 20, 2018. The nine teams consisted of many top universities including Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins University, UC Dublin, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), George Washington University, and University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. The Penn State team that competed, Business as Casual, was made up of first-year MBA candidates Benedetta Piva, Anoop Sharma, Vivek Chandran, Peter Jabaut and Richard Neal. We competed admirably in the competition and were able to meet with many bright minds through the experience. A Johns Hopkins University team won the competition with HKUST and Georgetown receiving 2nd and 3rd places, respectively.
The case prompt was a very challenging proposition. The prompt objective was to create an innovative strategy for the National Parks Service (NPS). It stated that NPS was dealing with many budgetary concerns and a large maintenance backlog. Our team approached the prompt with a dual infrastructure mobile application that would have one mobile interface for park visitors, and another for the workforce and volunteers that work with NPS. Both applications were equipped with fire management reporting, social media boards, and map features that could be used at all US national parks and monuments. The proposed idea would allow for more visitors to have a better customer experience, leading to higher revenues for NPS, as well as reducing the costs through fire prevention and workforce allocation efficiencies.
The first round was to create a five-minute video of our proposed approach for the NPS to IBM Consulting management. Then the nine finalists were chosen from the 29 teams’ submissions. The final round was an in-person presentation with IBM federal government consultants at Georgetown. The competition was a great experience for the team to network and learn from IBM and other teams from top MBA programs around the world. Through our performance at the competition, our team proved we deserved to be there, leaving everyone involved with a good impression of the young leaders produced here at Penn State.
Our team is thankful for the help of Nancy Mahon and those in 220 for teaching, supporting, and facilitating us in our endeavors. We would not have performed as well in this event without your help and the valuable lessons we have learned from you and all of our exceptional faculty teaching during the first year in the MBA program.