NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Six teams of MBA students from top business schools competed last weekend in the fourth annual Vanderbilt MBA eStrategy Contest at the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University. Students from the Harvard Business School took home the $25,000 prize from the contest, the largest case competition of its kind.
The students made detailed presentations of the global e-health growth strategies they devised for Roche Diagnostics before a panel of judges from Roche Diagnostics, HCA, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Humana and WebMD Envoy.
In addition to the Harvard Business School team, the Feb. 15 competition included representatives of the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Rutgers Business School.
Forty-five student teams from 29 domestic and international business schools entered the first round of competition in January. For last weekend’s final-round presentations in Nashville, the finalists expanded on their first round submissions, going into considerably more depth. They analyzed the current e-health marketplace—looking at products and services that utilize computers and the Internet to deliver innovative healthcare applications such as data capture, data connectivity, results interpretation and content integration—and recommend how Roche Diagnostics could build on its current areas of expertise to expand into e-health through acquisition or alliance.
"To approach this problem, we first developed a long-term vision for the future of healthcare,” explained Philip Borden, speaking for the Harvard team. “And we strongly felt that personalized medicine—delivering healthcare targeted specifically for a patient’s unique genetics—was the future. To help Roche capitalize on that future, we proposed that they tightly couple their Diagnostic and Therapeutic divisions to generate actionable healthcare information for patients and doctors. Given this vision, we developed a specific roadmap to get there, linking this vision to a specific action plan."
The winning team, which took the name Vandelay Industries (a fictitious company on TV’s Seinfeld), was made up of Philip Borden, John Gilmartin and Catherine Turco. The runner-up prize of $5,000 went to the New Product Ventures (NPV) team from the Wharton School, made up of Michael Basta, Jennifer Bergheiser and Jeanette Smith.
The case for this competition was written by representatives at Roche Diagnostics with input from Owen School student Kevin Dumont, the contest’s director, and Thomas Novak, professor of management at the Owen School and co-director of eLab.
“Vandelay Industries’ and NPV’s solutions were especially outstanding," Dumont said, "but all presentations were very strong. From those of us at Owen who worked to make this contest a success, we want to acknowledge not only all the great entries but also the excellent panel of judges and, of course, our sponsors, who have been consistently supportive since the start, when Roche provided such a compelling case.”
Sponsors of the 2003 contest include Roche Diagnostics, Vanderbilt University’s eLab, the eBusiness & Technology Club at the Owen School, HCA, WebMD Envoy and Gaylord Entertainment.
For details about the Vanderbilt MBA eStrategy Contest, go to the competition’s web site at www.estrategycontest.com