By Carlos Chicas Berti
In November, third-year BCom students Derek Douglas, Sebastian Stewart and Ye Wang earned a spot among the top ten teams selected to travel to Vilnius, Lithuania to compete in the annual Creative Shock case competition finals. The three Gustavson students, along with fourth teammate Blake Dickson, ended the competition an impressive fourth out of more than 400 international teams.
Creative Shock is a social business case competition in which participating teams of students from around the world compete to solve finance, marketing, PR and strategy problems for social businesses (businesses whose goals look beyond increasing profits and strive to make positive impacts in society).
After receiving an email promoting the competition, Derek started his search for great teammates.
“Sebastian and Ye are in my BCom cohort, and I knew they were exceptional at what they did,” Derek says. “I immediately asked them to join.” To round off his team he reached out to Blake, a friend from high school and now a student at McEwan University.
With advice from Gustavson professors in their toolkit, the team went to work on the preliminary round, which took place online over the course of several days. “We applied the skills we learned in BCom to everything from our presentation and PowerPoint structure to the accounting practices we used in our models,” says Derek.
The advice paid off, as the team swept the preliminary round of the competition, achieving first place out of more than 400 international teams, made up of nearly 1800 students, from universities including Oxford and McGill.
With financial help from Gustavson’s BCom program, Dean’s office and Center for Social and Sustainable Innovation, the team flew to Lithuania for the final phase of competition: a five-day face off between the top ten teams.
The Gustavson team quickly discovered that their time in Lithuania would not be a holiday. They got right to work, passing through another round of the competition by pitching their idea for a sustainable tea company that hired refugees.
The Final Round
“The final round was an overnight case, so we woke up on Saturday morning and didn’t sleep until our way back to Canada,” says Sebastian. “We were up for two whole days doing a case.”
In the final round, the team pitched a new business idea that aimed to help children with ADHD improve their educational experience through high-stimulus games and courses delivered through virtual-reality goggles. Their diligence and teamwork paid off with the noteworthy fourth-place finish from an original pool of more than 400 teams.
Ye attributes the group’s success chiefly to the diverse strengths of their team members.
“Our team benefitted from two key elements: Derek and Blake are presenters who are familiar with pitching creative ideas, while Sebastian and I are financially minded and calculating,” he says.
Derek reiterated the importance of what he learned at Gustavson. “In class we’ve learned how diversity improves the performance of teams, and how conflict is important in team dynamics, and the importance of a base foundation of trust—so to then go into the real-world with this competition and utilize these components was an exceptional real-life learning experience.”
Photo: Courtesy of Blake Dickson
