As you may know, there are no classes on Fridays at Fisher. Fridays are devoted to leadership and personal development. So, yesterday, instead of catching up on homework like some of my other classmates, I decided to personally develop myself by participating in the P&G Case Competition. This was my first case competition, and so, I really didn’t know what to expect.
The competition started on Thursday afternoon when we were greeted by P&G employees and presented with the case: “How to grow the Crest Whitestrips business”. We were only given 4 hours to work on the case which meant that we had to make some assumptions and come up with an action plan very quickly. We worked in teams of 4 and it was my first time working with all of my teammates . Fortunately, somehow, we all had complimentary strengths and were able to put together a cohesive presentation without pulling our hair out.
There were over 13 teams that presented which made for a very long day since everyone watched the other teams present! One positive effect of this was that we were all able to see what the other teams came up with and we were also able to see our classmates in action (it was the first time I saw a lot of people present)…All in all, although my team didn’t win anything, I am happy with our finished product. I think we put a different spin on the problem—we actually changed the product and the packaging (I’m not sure how the judges felt about this though!).
Looking forward, I am participating in the Internal Case Competition in January. So, this provided much needed practice. But, I can only imagine how much more grueling that experience will be since we will have all day to work on the case and not just 4 hours! I guess I’ll just have to wait and see……
p.s. Congratulations to the winning team!
p.s.s. Thanks to P&G for hosting the competition and most importantly, providing us with goodie bags 🙂 not sure what I am going to do with the dog food though!