The Texas Christian University—Neeley School of Business recently hosted the 2016 PepsiCo MBA Invitational Business Case Competition, featuring MBA students from 14 universities, including Neeley.
On Friday evening, Oct. 28th, MBA students from 14 universities around the country arrived to participate in the competition. They were assigned to eight teams, each mixed so that every team member represented a different school. The following morning, teams received the case from PepsiCo, and had until Saturday afternoon to prepare for their presentations. First place winners received a $7,000 prize; second place, $5000 and third place, $3000.
Since each team included students from different schools, the winning teams featured a variety of students from programs across the country. There was nonetheless a Neeley student present on each of the winning teams: Everett Betts on the first place team, Tony John for second place and Anna Nguyen on the third place team. Several of the 14 schools that participated in the competition were Columbia Business School at Columbia University, Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame and the Olin Business School at Washington University, among other top business schools.
“The uniqueness of the PepsiCo MBA Invitational is that people from different MBA programs are placed on a team with other MBA students they have never met before to deal with a current PepsiCo strategic initiative. It mimics real situations of working on teams with different professionals with different skills, all concentrating on coming up with the best solution for the company,” said Ed Reifenstahl, the director for MBA experiential learning at Neeley.
The PepsiCo MBA case competition is in its second year, and is possible through a partnership of TCU Neeley and PepsiCo. Judges this year included major leaders in business, such as senior vice president of Frito-Lay North America Chris Turner and Ricardo Barrenechea, region chief financial officer of PBC South.