MBA students’ case floats judges’ boat

MBA Case Competition winners (from left) Bakhtavar Mody, Timothy Chretien, Bill Jones and Heather Ragland

1:19 p.m., Feb. 15, 2005--Four students pursuing their master’s degrees in business administration in UD’s Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics were judged in a competition to have floated the best ideas for improving the corporate performance of Celebrity Cruises Inc.

The students—Bakhtavar Mody, Heather Ragland, Timothy Chretien and Bill Jones—made up one of three teams that competed Friday, Feb. 11, in the final round of the college’s annual MBA Case Competition. As first-place winners, they shared a $2,000 prize and earned praise from a panel of area business executives for their team’s presentation.

The students participating in the finals were selected the previous week in a preliminary round of competition. The teams named as runners-up in the finals, which each received a $500 prize, consisted of Sanjay Mukherjee, Doug Tomich, Ashlee Lukoff and Wenmin Qin; and Elmer Cherry, Phil Oyerly and Mohammad Zaber.

The competition was based on a case, published in the Harvard Business Review, detailing some of the challenges faced by Celebrity Cruises in the changing and highly competitive global cruise industry. The cruise line, which was founded in 1989, had carved out a “mid-tier premium” niche in the market, positioned between the least expensive mass-market lines and the luxury segment. However, according to the published article, Celebrity now faces soaring labor and fuel costs and a significant increase in the number of ships competing internationally in the cruise business.

Students in the case competition analyzed Celebrity’s business, using only information available to the public, and developed strategies they believed would help the company improve its revenues and profits. Each team presented its recommendations to a panel of judges in a 25-minute session, followed by 15 minutes in which the students answered questions from those business leaders.

The format was designed to mimic a presentation in a corporate boardroom. Judging was based on such criteria as the students’ understanding of the business situation, their presentation style and delivery and the quality and creativity of their recommendations.

Judging the final round were Carol Ammon, CEO of Endo Pharmaceuticals; Alan Levin, CEO of Happy Harry’s Inc.; John Riley, director of public affairs for Hercules; Kevin Finn, a partner in Iron Hill Brewery; William H. Schieffer, president of Siegfried & Schieffer; and Mark Oller, vice president and managing director of Wilmington Trust.

The University’s MBA program also has been invited to send a three-student team to an international case competition March 18-19 at George Washington University. The participants in that event will be selected individually, in a separate application process from the on-campus case competition.

Article by Ann Manser
Photo by Duane Perry

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