Business Administration and Management (ADE) students work on three business challenges during the new edition of B-Day
On 5 April the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences celebrated its patron’s saint’s day, San Vicente Ferrer, by holding another new Business Day. This year it was entitled “B-Challenged”. On this occasion, the students were divided into teams and they had to present their solutions to three challenges suggested by Banco Sabadell, Laboratorios Diafarm and Lidl.
The event began with a talk by Dr Robert J. Petrausch, director of Public Relations and a professor in the department of Mass Communication at Iona College. Petrausch talked about innovation, creativity and new media. The director of International Relations at Iona College Jeff Turner then presented the event and took the opportunity to describe the MBA Fast Track programme which Iona College offers in conjunction with UIC Barcelona.
Afterwards Professor Noelia Jiménez-Asenjo presented the three awards for the best Final Degree Project and the Final Master’s Degree Project offered by the Faculty itself, along with the Society of Economists and Cáritas Diocesana in Barcelona, respectively.
Before talking about the challenges of the three companies, the students who won awards as part of the Academic Excellence Programme described their winning projects. The presentation was useful to demonstrate teamwork and business proposals that are similar to what other students will have to work on over the hours following.
The event was aimed at all the students in the Faculty. More than 200 students attended the event and were divided into teams with all the different years mixed up, each led by a student taking a University Master's Degree in Business Administration and Production Systems. Three companies: Lidl, Diafarm and Banco Sabadell each presented their challenge: “The identification of new concepts that are significant for the consumers of health related products”, in the case of Laboratorios Diafarm; “Managing the cold chain at Lidl”, Lidl, and “Designing the office of the future”, Banco Sabadell.
The teams had four hours to complete the challenges. They used an active methodology called Design Thinking, under supervision from Teamlabs and Quid. This methodology has gradually begun to be implemented over the past few years in various companies and is now one of the most useful tools oriented towards promoting entrepreneurship and innovation in a successful way.
After the hours of work and the selection of two semifinalist teams for each challenge, the grand final arrived. All the semifinalists had five minutes to present their project. The winning teams were teams 10, 16 and 20. These three teams will have the opportunity to present their projects to the directors of the three aforementioned companies.
In the words of the Dean of the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences, Dr Marta Mas, the event met its three objectives: to celebrate the patron saint’s day, to learn a new methodology and to work on real cases to thereby provide a response to business needs.
