Deadline: June 30, 2017 | Register here
Eligibility: Students currently enrolled in an eligible program of study or have been enrolled in an eligible program of study during 2016. An eligible program is any business or technical discipline based postgraduate program of study (such as MBA, Masters Degrees or other relevant post-graduate degree programs in business or technical disciplines).
Prize: USD 125,000,- in cash prizes
Global Business Challenge 2017
The Global Business Challenge is a graduate business case competition to design sustainable solutions to global problems.
The theme for the 2017 Global Business Challenge is ‘Renewable Energy’
The challenge is to ‘develop novel solutions that lowers the cost and/or reduces the risks associated with the transition from fossil-fuel based energy to achieving sustainability and reliability from renewable energy sources’.
The challenge statement is NOT meant to be prescriptive in nature. As such, teams may be quite broad in their interpretation of the problem statement their solution specifically addresses. For instance ‘risk’ may relate to all types of ‘risk’ such as technical, cost/pricing, commercial, adoption risk as examples.
Purpose and Mission
The objective of the GBC is to leverage the exceptional intellectual talent from the worlds’ top business schools and universities to solve a major global problem.
The competition is designed to challenge students to formulate business solutions for globally relevant and contemporary ‘wicked’ problems with global significance.
Importantly, the GBC is designed to foster cross-border and cross-discipline collaborations to create solutions that capture emerging transformative business opportunities for industries, regions and countries.
Compete for $125,000 in cash prizes plus funding support for commercialisation of finalist solutions.
Solutions will consist of a combination of new and emerging technologies, as well as novel business models to support commercialisation and global adoption of these solutions.
Industry prizes are specifically targeted to support finalist teams, or their collaborators in their commercialisation effort. As collaboration is a key pillar of the competition, teams are encouraged to have strong collaboration with technology providers, from research and industry and government organisations.
As collaboration is a key pillar of the competition, teams are encouraged to have strong collaboration with technology providers, from research and industry and government organisations.
As the first and largest competition of its type in the world and its partners have committed to host the event for an initial seven-year period. This will see the GBC has become the new benchmark in Graduate Case Competitions with a focus on delivering implementable and practical solutions to the world’s biggest challenges.
Format
The competition is to be run over two rounds. Round 1 is a virtual round comprising a virtual pitch and the submission of a 5 page Executive Summary of the proposed “Concept Solution”. Round 2 (Finals) comprises an intensive weeklong competition round held in Brisbane, Queensland.
The finals process involves:
- A 48-hour lock-in phase where teams need to develop a business case for a hypothetical application for their proposed solution. This hypothetical may be determined by the awarding prize giver/s from our industry and government partners based on specific business objectives of the Partner.
- A CEO pitch (20 Minutes Plus 20 minutes Q&A defence)
The winners are announced at the Gala Dinner at the conclusion of which the following year’s challenge is officially launched.
Forming a team
Team participation will comprise a mix of a maximum four postgraduate students from any combination of business and/or technical disciplines.
Students must have been enrolled in any academic period between July of the previous year through to June of the year of competition. Students can be either a full-time or part-time and schools and universities may field multiple teams.
Judging
Judges are members of the Australian and global business community as well as financial and technical experts selected by the organisers and the advisory board. The judging panel will be comprised of different judges for each round of the competition.
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