Local Graduate School Placed 12th Nationally at Strategy Simulation

A team of three MBA students from the Crummer Graduate School of Business at Rollins College placed 12th in the nation in the L’Oreal e-Strat Challenge, an annual international online business strategy competition. Teammates Hanko Zeitzmann, Richard Harem and Jacob Moussa, competed against 10,000 teams from across the world for a chance to present their business strategies to executives at L’Oreal’s headquarters in Paris. Scoring ahead of more than 9,800 teams, the Rollins trio made it to the semi-finals and finished 12th nationally.

“This competition is an appropriate way to bring the academic and business worlds closer together,” said Dr. Craig McAllaster, Dean of the Crummer School. “Because of our focus on creative application, our students were well prepared for this type of competition and scored very high. In the L’Oreal challenge, for example, the Crummer Team ranked side by side with teams from Kellogg and Columbia Business School while scoring ahead of schools such as Stanford, Harvard, Wharton, and Darden”

The seven-week e-Strat Challenge places students in a simulated general management role as the head of a fictitious cosmetics firm, managing a portfolio of products, facing new market situations and challenges during six rounds of intensive global competition. During each round, students are asked to make critical decisions about all aspects of the fictitious company including pricing, production volume and capacity, research and development, marketing, advertising and brand positioning. In each round, teams were given more than 30 charts and graphs to analyze and were asked to make more than 150 decisions. During the semi-final round, each team was required to build a business plan based on a global strategy. Those who made it to the final round present their business plans and defend their strategies to a jury of L’Oreal management and strategy experts in Paris, France.

Since it was launched in 2000, more than 25,000 students have competed in the e-Strat competition and L’Oreal has hired almost 70 e-Strat players. L’Oreal created the competition to get students involved in the company and to attract both men and women job candidates to a company that’s traditionally viewed as female-oriented.

The Crummer Graduate School of Business was founded in 1957 at Rollins College and is ranked by Forbes magazine as among the best business schools for return on investment. The School offers four personalized MBA programs taught by distinguished faculty. U.S. News & World Report ranked the Crummer School among the top 25 part-time professional MBA programs nationwide. Because of the Crummer School’s high admission standards, focus on real-world experience, curriculum tailored to meet today’s business needs, small classes, and intense instruction by distinguished senior faculty, graduates of the Crummer School consistently receive job offers with the most prestigious national and international organizations.

Founded in 1885, Rollins College is Florida’s oldest recognized college and is consistently ranked by U.S. News & World Report as one of “America’s best colleges.” For more information about Rollins College and the Crummer School, visit our Web site at www.rollins.edu.