4 business students win case competition

Last month, four second-year MBA students won the Pac-10/Big 10 Case Competition, considered one of the most prestigious case competitions in the nation.\nAbhi Nadgir, Rachita Sundar, John Walter and Manish Mathur were the four IU representatives in the Pac-10/Big 10 Case Competition. Bhavin Shah, a member of the Big Ten-winning team, is studying abroad in Spain this semester and was unable to compete.\nNadgir, the team leader, selected the students based on strong financial background and strategic inclinations. After Walter joined, the team naturally evolved and shaped itself. \n“It’s surprising actually, because when you stick four A-type personalities in one room for 36 hours straight, there’s a lot of potential for this kind of argumentative attitude, I feel,” Walter said. “But everyone was so team-oriented that it never became an issue, and the end goal was always in sight.”\nFor 36 hours, the team worked to reach an effective solution to the 2006 Netflix case, which called for the team to come up with a solution for the change in market and find ways to grow to compete with rising competitors. The students stayed continuously motivated by MBA core coordinator and coach Keith Dayton. Although he wasn’t allowed to speak with the students for 24 hours because of strict competition rules, he was always available for moral support. \n“Our coach, Keith Dayton, he gave us bags and bags of food and candy and snacks and doughnuts and all kinds of stuff, so we never needed a break,” Walter said. “We always had an arsenal of treats to choose from.”\nAlthough they addressed the question at hand, the team went further to suggest other strategic issues that Netflix should consider. \n“We were given some options but we thought out of the box,” Mathur said. “We challenged the vision of the company.”\nBecause three of the four students had worked together before, they worked well together again, knew each other’s backgrounds and skills and had immense respect for each other, Nadgir said. \nBut despite these factors, the most obvious reason for the group’s success was the participants’ education from the Kelley School of Business, Dayton said.\n“It made you have a humble pride for what they were able to do,” Dayton said. “It’s amazing to hear them talk about individual faculty and how the educational experiences that they’ve had have really transcended the classroom and shown them that that academic experience is real.”