Bifröst students participate in Nordic Case Challenge

A team of four Bifröst students from the undergraduate program in business administration participated in the Nordic Case Challenge that was held at the end of last week at Reykjavik University. Birkir Snær Jónsson, Helga Halldórsdóttir, Lea Hrund Sigurðardóttir and Þórunn Selma Bjarnadóttir competed with teams from Aarhus University (Denmark), BI Norwegian Business School (Norway), Copenhagen Business School (CBS; Denmark), Lund University (Sweden), Reykjavik University (Iceland), Satakunta University of Applied Sciences (Finland), Tampere University (Finland) and University of Agder (Norway).

Increasing the sustainability of business models

The Nordic Case Challenge focused on the challenges of increasing the sustainability of business models and included two rounds. The first round was held at each university to determine the winning team that will proceed to the final round to compete with the teams from the other universities. During the first round, the teams worked on a case from the Swedish online shop Boozt. During the final round, the students worked on a case from the Icelandic food processing company Marel.

15 hours to solve a case most complicated

When solving the cases and presenting their solutions, the students took the role of consultants who analyze the underlying problem, develop innovative ideas and evaluate alternative solutions, present a plan how to implement the solution and determine the financial impact. The extra challenge in the final round was that the students had only about 15 hours to solve the case. Birkir, Helga, Lea and Þórunn worked non-stop from Friday morning at 9:30 until Saturday early morning at 1:00 which was the submission deadline for the case solutions. After only a few hours of sleep, all groups presented their solution on Saturday morning between 9 and 11.

A jury decision

All groups came up with excellent ideas, detailed analyses and implementation plans, and they presented their solutions in a highly professional way. After each presentation, the presenting group needed to answer detailed questions from the jury. In the end, the jury determined the team from BI Norwegian Business School as winner of the Nordic Case Challenge. Marel invited all teams for a dinner at the Marel headquarters in Garðabær.

Bifröst University is proud of Birkir, Helga, Lea and Þórunn for their enthusiasm, hard work and excellent performance in the Nordic Case Challenge. The teams says: “Við erum gríðarlega stolt af okkur, lærðum helling en þetta var gríðarlega krefjandi en skemmtilegt.”

A special thank you goes to Ásgeir Jónsson who is director (forstöðumaður) of the undergraduate program in business administration at Reykjavik University for organizing this year’s Nordic Case Challenge.

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