Sherri Henry, director of the Residential Business Community (left), and Darrell King, senior associate director of Multicultural Business Programs (right), pictured with the first-place team.
The annual BUS 291 Case Competition took place Oct. 23 in the Edward J. Minskoff Pavilion. This assignment in the Introduction to Business course provides freshman business students the opportunity to create a pitch to a company, an experience that usually happens in a business student’s junior or senior year. The case competition allows students to work in groups to create an idea to make improvements to a company, builds their leadership skills and gives them the opportunity to experience what business leaders go through in the corporate world.
In this year’s case competition, PepsiCo challenged 54 students to come up with a pitch to increase the company’s sales using the information they were given in the assignment. Teams had a month to prepare, and their presentations were organized and innovative. Some groups created and presented tri-fold boards showing all the statistics of the company, and others crafted PepsiCo T-shirts and PepsiCo snacks and drinks.
The students went above and beyond to sell their pitches to the representatives of PepsiCo. All of their ideas were amazing, but only one group could take the first-place prize, winning their share of $2,000. The first-place team of freshmen winners included Eyan Bell, Jaclyn Jose, Mason Martin, Chirag Palande and Unadia Strozier.
Overall, these business students learned valuable skills that will help them continue to grow as business leaders and prepare them for their forthcoming courses at Michigan State University.
