Last week, we wrote about the 24th Annual Kogod Case Competition, one of the premier annual events hosted by the Kogod School of Business each spring semester.
The competition required that teams come up with a way to help move Monsanto, a sustainable agriculture company, toward a corporate social responsibility (CSR) focused company in Ghana – a country that in the past rejected Genetically Modified Organisms. Teams pitched ideas ranging from developing new cost-effective seeds that grow quickly in Ghanaian soil to implementing irrigation systems throughout the country.
“This year’s case was less traditional in the prompt because it provides background knowledge using Walmart and asked students to then apply those lessons-learned to Monsanto,” Jennifer Zolla, a Kogod Center for Business Communications (KCBC) peer consultant said in an article posted on the Kogod website.
A panel of judges, made up of local alumni and business leaders, scored each team out of 60 based on five areas: critical issues, evidence, recommendations, question and answer, and overall impression. They would select a winner, who would receive a cash prize of $200.
The first place winner of the Massachusetts division was Millennial Management (Laith Shakir, Sofia Baneth, Kiersten Gonzalez, Elizabeth Lilley); the first place winner for the Nebraska Division was Case 00 (Kylund Arnold, Sophia Barnes, Matteo Garofalo, Alexander Niu, Virginia Zhao); the first place winner for the Wisconsin Division was GMA (Siwaree Indradat, Alyson Mucha, Tom Shelly, Katerina Trajkova).