SCB Future Leader Challenge is Thailand’s first business case competition for master’s degree students, which aims to provide a practical learning platform by using dynamic business case issue faced in the real world. Yuxin Hou, Limin Lu, Tharn, and Weijie Zhang, four MBA students from Fudan School of Management immediately formed a team dubbed Durian King and went for the challenge.
At the semi-final's 5-hour case section, the team was assigned a case of Doi Kham, a big company in Thailand that produces a wide variety of agricultural products including ready-to-drink fruit juice, fruit juice concentrates, and other food products.
After a comprehensive analysis of the company's current situation,the students worked out a business plan within five hours, suggesting that Doi Kham should expand its sales at online-offline channel through a series of practices including improving the website as a sales and promotion platform and merging online sales channel to offline grocery stores.
The report was then presented to a group of judges including CEO of Doi Kham. The quick response and ideal plan impressed the judges a lot, who then awarded the team the top prize of the section.
Beyond the award they won,the students have benefited a lot.
Yuxin Hou said, the competition was a great opportunity for them to put what they learnt in class into practice. The process of discussing and infusing different opinions to push forward the project was exactly one important method they learnt from MBA education.
The trip to Thailand has enabled them to get a deeper understanding of the economic and business environment in Thailand, Hou added. To his surprise, many of the senior management personnel in big companies in Thailand are foreigners who are well-educated and open-minded and therefore are able to bring more innovative and globalized ideas to the company. This is quite different from the companies in China, Hou added.
