Case Study: Students teach the CEOs

Tel Aviv University students came out tops in a Case Study contest sponsored by TheMarker, the Dan David Foundation and financial consulting company TASC. Ben Gurion University and the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center tied for the second place in the competition among MBA students who were asked by four companies - El Al, Partner, Bank Leumi and Matrix, to analyze and offer creative, economic solutions to real-life business conundrums.

Each of the companies chose a winning team for the first prize award of NIS 100,000. Second and third place winners were awarded NIS 50,000 and NIS 30,000.

In addition to their cash, some of the teams were invited to submit resumes by three of the four enterprises. Partner says it will adopt the solution proposed by its first prize winning team and Matrix has invited the top teams to a meeting with the company's management to discuss their proposal.

Some 1,500 students from 12 institutions of higher education signed up for the contest and more than 200 teams, three to four students per team, participated in the preliminary phase in which they were asked to address a given problem in 300 words.

Forty teams made it to the next stage. At this stage the teams met with top management from Partner, Bank Leumi, Matrix and El Al, and were presented with the conundrum.

During the semi-final stage, students presented their proposals to a panel of judges that included representatives from TASC and management from the four companies. The presentations were graded by criteria that included the quality of presentation, and the business model. The top four or five teams addressing each of the four issues went on to compete in the final phase.

The winners were announced yesterday at a management conference held at the Tel Aviv Port.

"The fact that a number of the participating companies are now considering implementing the principles presented by the winning teams is the real success of the Case Study competition," said Guy Kuperman, a partner at TASC.

The team that took the first prize for the Matrix challenge was a multinational group calling itself 'Seraph,' from Tel Aviv University. Members included 26 -year-old Rafael Mazuz, a U.S. citizen born in Israel, Amitava Mittra, 30, an Indian national, and 29 year old David McGeady of Ireland.

The question that they were posed was: Which international markets are attractive for Matrix?

The team proposed expansion into the Russian market by forging a strategic partnership from the Indian market, with a focus on the secured bank services industry.

Their presentation included video segments of interviews with key personnel in the international IT sector, for which they were awarded extra points.

The EMBA- Bar Ilan University team, made up mainly of civil servants, was asked how the airline could expand its tourism operations. The team suggested that the company focus on specific niches in which Israel has a relative advantage such as bird watchers and pilgrims.

The team was comprised for the most part of members slightly older than the average participant, included 55-year-old Yaffa Ben Ari, a project manager at the Foreign Ministry, 42-year-old Yoel Lifshitz, who is deputy supervisor of health maintenance organizations for the Health Ministry, Malka Shimon, an employee of the Defense Ministry's accounts department, and moving spirit behind the team's achievement, and Adiel Shomron, 44, an independent business and legal consultant.

The three members of the YNG team, which presented the winning proposal for Bank Leumi's problem, argued their way through the entire competition, until their acrimony became the very signature of a successful meeting.

Leumi had asked for a strategic marketing path to break into cellular banking. The YNG team, from the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center, suggested launching a 'Leumi To Go' application, which would include a cellular interface enabling access to checking accounts and execution of payments through cellular instruments, as an alternative to a credit card, cash, check or bank transfer.

The judges said that the team had managed to strike an optimal balance between functions that are achievable in the short term, and the creation of a long term development horizon for Leumi in the area of cellular banking.

The team members included 34 year old Noam Bernstein, a teaching assistant for the center's strategy course, who until recently worked at Dov Moran's Modu and was laid off in the company's most recent round of cutbacks; Ilan Gutman, 29, who made Aliya from the U.S. about a year ago where, among other things he worked for the investment bank Goldman Sachs, and who is now building his own business, and his partner, Yaniv Nissim, 30, an analyst for the private equity fund Sky.

The team calling themselves 'the Technion dudes' captured the first prize in the competition to resolve Partner's dilemma: How to lead the firm into the area of communication services for special needs clients? Team members from the Technion suggested that the company develop a location-based cellular dating service.

The team members are Zohar Barak, 38, a software engineer by training, 32 year old Eran Yaakobi and 33 year old Yuval Tsentler, both software engineers employed at Intel.

As the student competition pressed on the task was simultaneously opened up to suggestions from the public. Yad2, which will shortly launch a new dating Web site, asked surfers to tell them what's missing from existing dating sites and what, in their opinion, would place Yad2 in a leading position in the field.

More than 1,200 surfers were asked to rank 220 different proposals received in the form of video and text. The company finally chose the option offered by Maayan Minzelli, who proposed 'Check-in dating' - dating based on location, which netted her a weekend in Berlin.