There are around 40 case competitions for bachelor students in business administration around the world every year. Faculty advisors (the team coaches) used a survey to rank several factors to make this selection for the top 10, including the quality of cases, teams and judges, number of teams and cases, the school’s reputation, the social activities, and networking opportunities.
“We set ourselves the target of winning the Champions Trophy and to have our own RSM STAR Case Competition to be one of the world’s 10 best case competitions,” says RSM Dean of Education Prof. Michel Lander. “We have achieved both now, which testifies to the quality of our School, our teachers and our students. These young talents can really help organisations make a positive change to their business by acting as consultants and coming up with ideas and strategies that can be implemented in business practice.”
A team of RSM bachelor students won the case competition at qualifier Copenhagen Business School in 2022, that’s why the team was invited to compete in the Champions Trophy in New Zealand in 2023 – and won!
Case competitions
Case competitions allow teams of the most talented bachelor students around the world to engage with corporate business by developing and presenting innovative solutions to real-life business challenges. The competitions usually last for about a week, and involve teams of students travelling from all over the world to a particular university. Within that week they are presented with two or three business cases which they have to solve in a limited time. Teams usually don’t know what the challenge is until the competition begins.
Joining RSM in the 10 best case competitions worldwide are universities such as Concordia University (John Molson School of Business) in Montreal, Copenhagen Business School, the University of Southern California (USC Marshall) and Maastricht University.
RSM STAR Case Club and Competition
The RSM STAR Case Club solves real-life business cases that are written by company professionals and focus on a problem that an organisation is facing. Topics range from finance to corporate social responsibility (CSR), and from marketing to digital innovation.
Students from RSM STAR, RSM’s student-organised study association – and the largest of its kind in Europe – organised the first RSM STAR Case Competition in Rotterdam in 2015. Case competitions enable RSM and its Case Club students to have purposeful engagement and create tangible impact by tackling business challenges faced by companies.
Cases are typically solved in teams of about four students, in a timeframe ranging from 3 to 48 hours, and are presented to and judged by a panel of academic staff, consultants and industry professionals. RSM STAR host trainings, workshops and case days throughout the year. In addition to joining prestigious international competitions, it also organises the annual RSM STAR Case Competition in Rotterdam.
“We’re proud that the quality of RSM STAR Case Competition is recognised worldwide, and we are happy to see that we contributed to this with the consistent quality of the cases over the years,” says Bas Koene, director of RSM’s Case Development Centre which was recently ranked in the top 10 of The Case Centre’s Impact Index 2023.
The history and recent successes of the RSM STAR Case Club are celebrated in the Wall of Fame display on the third floor (T3) of RSM’s Mandeville building.
