KEY POINTS:
Eleven university teams will pit their skills against each other to tackle real business problems for Kiwi companies this week as part of an international competition.
The Champions Trophy case Competition kicked off at Auckland University yesterday with the Auckland team facing off the National University of Singapore to devise a plan for Mainfreight on how to ride out the economic storm.
The teams have five hours to study publicly available information for a particular business and must come up with a plan to present to judges who then grill the team for 10 minutes.
The teams accumulate points in the three-day lead-up with the final on Saturday. A university spokeswoman said the event was similar to TV show The Apprentice and teams trained for months to compete. Those competing at the Auckland event, which is the first of more than 10 held annually, must have won a previous event last year.
The teams include undergraduate business students from UC Berkeley in California, the University of Washington, Copenhagen Business School, Hong Kong University, Melbourne University, Nanyang University of Technology, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the National University of Singapore, Singapore Management University, Thammasat University and The University of Auckland.
Last year Auckland University's team won the overall competition.
The event is open to the public and those wanting to watch the showdown can go along to the Owen G Glenn Building from 3pm tomorrow, Friday and Saturday.
