Is there such a thing as a realistic business simulation? Turns out that’s not just an oxymoron. The EDGE Business Competition, hosted in January 2014 by the University of Alberta, is a multidisciplinary case competition that involves several challenges that will test delegates in the areas of accounting, finance, marketing, public relations and anywhere in between. Goodman students did exceptionally well in this competition: Anthony Marotta, Claire McCarthy, Jaminy Ulaganathan, Neil Bourque and Matthew Leslie placed first overall while Mike Walkey, John Holland, Jill Windeatt, Vik Narula and Pavel Tarasevich placed fourth overall. We caught up with Matthew Leslie and Jill Windeatt to talk about their experiences at this interactive, multidisciplinary, high-energy case competition.
Goodman sent two teams to this event. How did you feel competing against your classmates?
Jill: Competing against classmates, and more importantly friends, was difficult, although it was necessary in order to try and win the competition (what we all go there to do). In the end it came down to no matter what happened in the competition, we would still all be friends after because we knew that this was just a simulation, and not real life.
Matt: I feel like it creates an added competitive motivation. Training and competing with other schools is great, but there’s a special kind of bragging right that come along with competing against your peers! That being said, EDGE is a very collaborative competition that encourages some sort of alliance strategy to gain advantages within the competition. Having another Goodman team at the competition created a strong alliance and it really worked out this year with great outcomes for both teams!
The EDGE business competition includes cases on accounting, finance, marketing, public relations, to name a few… how do you prepare for such a variety of topics?
Matt: When it comes to preparing for EDGE, there is little you can do in the sense of studying course material. I find the best way to succeed at EDGE is to mentally prepare yourself for anything that comes along. We had some impromptu challenges during our meetings to throw some people off guard. At a base level, being able to sell yourself and a random business on the spot is the best asset you can have.
Jill: In our training we were lucky enough to have some cases from the previous year so that we could hold mock competitions and see who would succeed more in certain topics of challenge. This was also helpful as some of the challenges that were thrown at us where similar to the last year so that we could have a bit of an advantage to finding out how we should handle certain challenges as well as to have an idea of what might be coming next.
What was your favourite challenge of the weekend?
Jill: My favourite challenge of the weekend was the Final Boardroom Meeting. This was at about 5 p.m. on Sunday when we are all excited about who will win, based on both the online simulation as well as the challenges that were presented to us. In the final boardroom we were faced with the topic of persuading the government to keep our company public and allow us to continue running it for the future. Going into the boardroom we had to know every detail of what we had done over the past two days of the simulation, as well as details as to why we did things, and what thoughts we had for the future. This challenge was my favourite because it allowed me to reflect back upon what we had done as a team throughout the simulation and allowed the entire team to compete, rather than sending an individual to a challenge and finding out how it went once they returned.
Matt: There were so many great challenges. It is the ‘anything can happen’ type of atmosphere that makes me love this competition. If I had to choose my favorite, it would be the contract negotiation simulation. We had about 10-15 minutes to read over a case and the details of the possible contract before a member of a different team came in to negotiate with you. I loved it because of the courses I’ve taken at Goodman and the challenge of trying to read people.
What was your least favourite challenge?
Jill: My least favourite challenge had to be the online simulation. This simulation was based upon a large algorithm that was heavily based upon finance and economics, two of my worst subjects. I was fortunate enough to have people on my team who are strong in finance and economics that I could rely on to explain the online simulation to me as well as take the lead on inputting decisions into it. If I were to compete again, I would take some time beforehand to review notes from classes such as economics and finance so that I could have a refresher.
Matt: I can’t really say that I didn’t like a particular challenge. They were all unique and took different skills to complete. I will say however that my least favorite part is the walk from your team to the challenge area. The uncertainty and the anticipation is really intense!
A key component of this business competition is a reliance on teamwork. You have to be a strong team in order to deal with such varied and fast paced challenges. What are your tips for building a strong team?
Jill: My biggest tip for building a strong team is knowing the strengths and weaknesses of each member. This was really beneficial going into the competition as it was helpful to have an idea beforehand as to what each member strengths were. This gave our entire team confidence that allowed us to know we would always send the strongest member out to compete in certain challenges and hopefully come back a winner.
Matt: I fully agree the idea of the importance of strong teams. Everyone on our team had a specific and very important role they played within the competition. I want to give a whole bunch of credit to my teammates Jaminy, Neil, Anthony, and Claire, because it really was a true team effort in Edmonton. I would say that to build a strong team, you really have to understand the team’s goal and what you may face along the way to realizing that goal. Everyone has their strengths, weaknesses, and areas of expertise. It is about being able to diversify the team to properly utilize everyone’s skills. Another very important part is group dynamics. You need to have people on your team who get along. There were times at EDGE when nothing was going right, but we all trusted in each other to turn it around. It’s only in strong teams that you can have that type of resilience when faced with failings and be able to turn it around to be successful.
