The road to Montreal #LifeasaNyenrodian

Jimmy Ramsteijn, MSc in Management student, shares his experience representing Nyenrode Business Universiteit at The John Molson MBA International Case Competition in Montreal, Canada.

''The John Molson MBA International Case Competition is organized by a team of students from the John Molson School of Business at Concordia University in Montreal. The competition is open to top business schools worldwide, and is recognized as the largest case competition of its kind. This year, 36 teams from 5 continents, 300 judges from the Montreal business community and 200 MBA students were participating.

Nyenrode's 2018 team

Nyenrode has been participating in the competition for the last five years. After a tough selection procedure, a lot of practice cases and great help from Nyenrode, the Full-time Master in Management students Myrthe, Victoria, Matthijs, Jimmy and their coach Willem van Donge (Head of Career and Personal Development) were ready to rock in Montreal.

The overall theme of the case competition was business ownership. The theme of business ownership encompasses a diverse variety of cross-functional subjects, including corporate governance, inter-generational ownership and/or management transition, private vs. public ownership, financing growth, acquisitions, liquidity, etc.

Training with the support of alumni

For a couple of months, we prepared ourselves by practicing with different cases for at least once a week. We received help during our preparations from Nyenrode Alumni, who also joined the competition in the past, and made some time to give us feedback and useful tips. We want to thank them and everyone who helped us the last couple of months.

Work hard, play hard

We were fully prepared for the competition, but when we arrived we experienced that the winters in Montreal (-27 degrees Celsius) were even colder than in the Netherlands. After a great NYE party and some more practice cases (always following the work hard, play hard mentality) we were ready for the first round. Our strategy was to surprise the judges with innovative ideas, which got us to the 2^nd place in our division after two cases! We ended the day with a cultural activity and visited the icehockey game between the Montreal Canadians and the San Jose Sharks, which was great!

After 5 cases and an overall ranking of 20^th out of 36 top universities, we are very proud and grateful for having been part of this great experience. We competed against MBA students from all around the world, expanded our network globally and showed the world that we have great potential as future business leaders. It was an incredible experience and we would like to thank everyone who made it possible.

Next year, team Nyenrode will be back, so be prepared…''