Business case consulting training, a 5 ECTS credit course, is where we began. A 9-week course involves solving practice cases, presenting them and learning together. Business case solving teaches a solution-concentrated mindset, which can be applied with your previously learned skills across various business fields, and you might get the opportunity to compete against other students on an international stage. As part of the course, we took part in an international case competition called Creative Shock, through which our team accessed the final part in Vilnius, Lithuania.
Creative Shock
Creative Shock is a unique case competition, bringing together students from around the world to solve business problems for real social businesses. Social business is a term used for a business model where a company operates not only to generate profit but also to give back to society to improve the community. This added a new challenge to the competition. This year, the businesses aimed to solve issues such as work life and social inclusion of people with mental impairments, alcohol, and backgrounds of other addictions. The main issue this year was to promote, discuss and improve the lives of different people by reducing the social stigma that surrounds these groups.
The competition finals went on for almost a week with teams from universities across the globe: nine teams out of participating 88 teams representing Business Schools from Canada, USA, Greece, Serbia, Spain, Vietnam, and we from Finland, were competing in the finale. After two intense business cases in Vilnius we managed to rank fourth in our first ever competition. The first case, lasting for four hours, definitely tested both our time management skills as well as viable innovativeness we could create in such a short amount of time. The other case, lasting for eight hours, on the other hand developed team spirit and endurance. Since the last case was cracked over the night, our team had to concentrate on keeping our ideas together and the work motivation going throughout the night – what a test for time and stress management! In between all the competitiveness, all teams did a lot of valuable networking, came together to join organized activities, learning about Vilnius and each other’s cultures.
DORA consulting agrees that in overall business case consulting training and case competitions offer a crash course for the future business environment and equips the student with the necessary tools in creating professional presentations and solving real-life business problems. You are forced to apply the knowledge learned in other courses in a practical way.
Mari Rytisalo, team coach and founder of Tampere Business Case Club adds that business case pedagogy is all about applying and utilizing the knowledge students have in addition to finding new information. Bringing it all together and creating innovative yet realistic recommendations for a solution which is represented in a professional manner. She also comments: “Looking at several successful career paths of TAMK Alumni committed to business case solving, we can see the value of it in several levels. Being able to develop the training over the past years has allowed us to build a strong network. Consequently, this enables us to get invitations to international business case competitions where we see the increasing success for our student teams, just as the amazing example of DORA Consulting team. Additionally, it all has resulted in valuable international visibility to TAMK”.
Text: TAMK Senior Lecturer at Business and Media, Mari Rytisalo and TAMK students Alina Rauhala, Rasmus Täyrönen, Onur Polat.
Photograph: Mari Rytisalo
