University team wins business 'Olympics' ( 2004-01-12 09:40) (China Daily by Li

( 2004-01-12 09:40) (China Daily by Li Jun)

With formal draws, tryouts and an atmosphere full of pressure, the Global Management Challenge has all the attributes of a big-time sporting event.

But what participants use is pure brain power, not physical strength.

As the final leg of the 8th Global Management Challenge China ended on Saturday in Beijing, the Blizzard Team from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangdong Province won the China region championship after 10 hours of fierce competition.

Fourteen teams from five universities entered the final round, with a team from University of International Business and Economics finishing in second place and a Sichuan University team coming up third.

This year, 438 teams from 56 universities attended the annual competition, which kicked off in China in 1996 and is the largest of its kind in the country.

More than 2,000 students, about 80 per cent of whose are business majors, vied to present the best solutions to simulated and real-world business problems .

The winning team will represent China in the final of the global competition in Portugal in March. GMC is touted as the Olympics for the international management sector.

It is the first time that a team from Sun Yat-sen University has won the championship and the Blizzard is the only Sun Yat-sen University team that entered the final round. In comparison, the final round featured seven teams from UIBE and four teams from Sichuan University.

"Analyzing a lot of information in a limited time, communicating directly and precisely and in a convincing way poses a real challenge, but we make it,"said Li Guoxin, chief executive officer of the Blizzard Team.

All the five members in the team are new to the competition, which is based on a computerized business management simulations. Participants get no access to the system before the competition.

"We won the game thanks to our decision-making based on sense,"said Gao Jianhui, 23, chief managing officer of the team.

Gao said "sense"is very important for MBA students, future management talent.

Usually several people form a team in the event, acting as the board of a real company. A certain number of teams compete for the market share under a model economic environment. Each team has to consider every aspect a real company might have to deal with such as marketing, production, financing, human resources and research and development, so as to get the biggest market share.