A team of four undergraduate Babson students earned a Finalist Award at the 2007 McCombs International Business Challenge (IBC) held at the University of Texas, Austin, November 14-18.

Team members are (left to right) Elizabeth Allen (Cape Elizabeth, Maine), Suzanne Cover (Deep River, Conn.), Mayra Roa (Colombia), and Olga Brik (Staten Island, NY), who were advised by finance professor Ryan Davies.

The International Business Challenge is an undergraduate business case competition held each fall at the University of Texas, Austin. Twenty universities compete in the event each with a team of four students. They are given a case depicting contemporary real-world problems confronted by a modern business firm. The students have three days to prepare a solution. The cases are based on a major company that brings representatives to judge the competition.

According to Davies, this year’s case was especially challenging. “Teams were required to find a commercially viable identity solution for the 4+ billion individuals living on less than $4 a day, the so-called "Base of the Pyramid" (BoP) for IBM.   Each team had 60 hours to prepare a solution to the case, which was then presented to IBM officials and other industry representatives.” 

“As faculty advisor, I was very impressed with the Babson team’s innovative solution, which involved creating a marketplace for the exchange and cross-verification of BoP IDs,” Davies said. “I’m also proud that this is the second consecutive year that Babson has won a finalist award at this competition!”

UC Berkeley

Case Western Reserve

University of Southern California

U of Washington

U of Minnesota

Georgetown

Indiana U

Purdue

BI Norwegian School of Management

National University of Singapore

Queen’s University

University of British Columbia

University of Texas at Austin

Fundacao Getulio Vargas

University of Hong Kong

Simon Fraser

Concordia

Chinese University of Hong Kong

U of Alberta