From March 20th to March 22nd, 2014, 16 teams sent from 16 top B-schools in the world such as Fudan University, MIT Sloan, Carnegie Mellon, Columbia, UCLA, IIMC etc. presented to compete for Grand Business Challenge in Digital Healthcare at Boston University. The two-day challenge provided the teams from leading business schools with the opportunity to showcase their ideas on how information technology could influence and transform global healthcare to create value for the world. The Fudan MBA team finally beat the teams from MIT, Columbia, UCLA and other teams and won the first prize in the competition.
The welcoming reception had all the participants in room representing their schools along with Merck mentors and other key employees, waiting for the first challenge to unfold. The teams were warned to not expect any sleep next 52 hours. The first challenge was unfolded and task was to research key digital health technologies, analyse trends, their future patterns and Merck’s possible response to it.
Teams were required to work overnight and present next afternoon. The task was not easy to accomplish in one night, and required the teams to sacrifice the night’s sleep. This task was demanding specially for teams like Fudan who travelled more than 20 hours and faced a huge amount of jet lag.
Teams were given numbers and were to keep their identity secret till the end of event. First round had four teams in each group and Merck’s senior executives as judges, who chose one team from each group to go on to Finals. The teams were highly competitive and judges were impressed by everyone’s presentation and efforts. In the end, the finalists chosen were – Fudan, Calgary, MIT, and Columbia to compete the next day in front of full audience in auditorium.
Judges for final were Venture Capitalists and very senior executives from Merck. The event was streamed live on net, and the finalist teams were not allowed to see the presentations of teams presenting before them. The judges’ panel made sure to ask grilling questions for 20 minutes from each team, after 20 minutes of presentation.
The winners were announced at evening reception. The Fudan MBA team was awarded as a champion unanimously by the judges for their out of box thinking and addressing important issues in emerging economies. The Fudan MBA team was highly appreciated by all, and left good impressions on all the top business schools present at the event.
The winners got attractive cash reward from Merck, and all the teams got a very good opportunity to network. The event was an intensely learning experience and left all the stakeholders in awe of what can be achieved by a group of committed people in 56 hours.
（Written by Amarpreet Singh, 2013 Asia MBA）
