Smith MBAs Travel to China, Compete Abroad

MBA students from around the globe pitched their ideas for businesses in China, all vying for $2,750 in cash prizes from the Robert H. Smith School of Business and Peking University. Students from the United States, China and Israel participated in the 2014 China Business Model Competition, an annual competition put on by the Smith School’s Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship and Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management in Beijing.

A cross-national team featuring two MBAs from the Smith and two from Peking won the competition’s $1,000 top prize with a pitch for Wireless ISP, a telecommunications business to bring better internet access to rural China.

“We are pleased to continue to offer this rich experiential learning opportunity to our students and students in China and Israel with our partners at the Guanghua School of Management,” said Alexander Triantis, Smith’s dean. “This annual competition and study abroad experience gives MBA students a hands-on opportunity to apply critical thinking and entrepreneurial skills in new markets – experiences that are ultimately transferable to any organization.”

Teams participating in the finals were tasked with pitching a plan for a venture that would do business in China or leverage Chinese resources in some way. The competition concluded a week of exploring venture creation and global operations in China’s rapidly evolving economy.

A part of Brent Goldfarb’s three-credit course on global learning , the study abroad program also included meetings with successful local entrepreneurs and visits to multinational corporations’ manufacturing facilities to better understand the Chinese market.

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