Case Solving Day, Budapest – 2014 Recap
I am not ashamed to admit that in the field of case studies, I am considered as an amateur. I am taking the Cases on Business Economics course at Corvinus but after solving four cases and having watched the final of the National Case Competition a month ago, it became clear to me that case competition is a special, separate category that needs to be learned. Spurred by the successes during the course at Corvinus, I registered for the Case Solving Day of HBCS, in the beginning mostly thinking that “for this price it is definitely worth checking this out”.
I would not want to get into the detailed program of the day, nor the description of what happened and what was said, mostly because those who will like what I am writing are either interested in case studies or considering a consulting career. The essentials of case study solving is anyway about the case solver being able to perform well with confidence in an extremely sudden, unpredictable situation about a professional topic. Improvising and thinking are still cool in 2014.
My first “totally worth checking it out, because why not” attitude did not change much after the catching-up trainings in the morning – here I need to mention that in case solving everyone has his or her strengths and weaknesses – and although I was tottering on my chair during lectures on presentation techniques, I really paid attention during the financial planning block. For the guy next to me who was from Finance and Accounting, this was the other way around. All in all these are always necessary, those who think they are too good to attend such trainings, will not make it in the long run in my opinion.
Basically I wanted to write about two things that really stick to me during the day. The first one is how seriously it was taken. There is a thin line between the “we are too serious and important” attitude and a program that is put together in an appropriate and professional way. The day was absolutely about us, the organizers knew how it was done in a good way, they did not try to push themselves in the spotlight – this actually increased their prestige in my eyes especially when I learned how good they were at what they do. After one presentation I got an advice for my future development which 1. only few people notice (the general goal is to cover what I am less good at), 2. I had been working on improving that for six months before. After one presentation. Not bad. I only mention it in parenthesis that this my first case study solving when we had a professional jury that was related to the subject of the case. I can tell you that you think about presenting a “let’s sell craft beer for the lower-middle middle class, do some marketing and they’ll buy it for sure”-type solution twice when the follow up questions will be asked by one of Heineken’s product managers. We had a relevant and interesting topic, I learned a lot from it and I did not have a humbug feeling.
The other one may sound really strange (it is for me to write about it) but for me in today’s messed up, social networking world, it was quite refreshing to be “locked up” with 23 strangers of my age and realize that it is still the mutual interest that brings people together and that creates friendships and sympathies. I’m not talking about sitting around a fire, singing childhood songs but it can really brighten your mood when you can work on challenging and professional topics in a group of talented, young people who share similar interests and then have a beer (or two) at the end. If I had been looking for the transition between a good company and the exploitation of great opportunities in higher education, for that day I believe we managed to find it.
Anna Seremet