Eight Leading Business Schools Participated in the 12th Sofaer International Strategic Case Competition (SICC)

TEL AVIV, Israel, June 2, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The final round of SICC 2016 took place last Wednesday, 25 May 2016, at the Coller School of Management, Tel Aviv University. The SICC is an annual international strategic case competition on an Israeli company operating in markets abroad.  

The subject of this year's case study was Foresight, an Israeli High-Tech company that is developing leading technology in the innovative industry of ADAS - Advanced Driver Assistance Systems as a step on the way to the autonomous vehicle.

The company trades at about $40 million on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.  Its CEO is Haim Siboni. Its COO, Ariel Dor, gave a presentation on the company's present operations to the competition participants.

This year, in addition to the team from the Coller School of Management, the participating teams of MBA students were from the following business schools:  Copenhagen, Denmark;  Cologne, Germany; Peking, China;  Rady, USA;  Cambridge, UK;  Rotman, Canada;  HKUST, Hong Kong.

Three teams reached the final round. The winning presentation was by the Rotman team and it received the Barton M. Biggs Award in the amount of $10,000, which was presented by Michael Sofaer, the representative of the donor family.

The competition judges were senior business leaders and academics in the area of business management. The judges of the final round were Yair Seroussi, Chairman of Bank Hapoalim; Chaim Hurvitz, CEO of the CHealth investment fund;  Ravit Barniv, past Chairperson of Tnuva and of Shikun & Binui;  Michael Sofaer, Managing director Sofaer Capital and the representative of the donor family; Prof. Moshe Zviran, Dean, Coller School of Management, Tel Aviv University;  and faculty members accompanying the participating teams who did not reach the final round.

The competition was organized and chaired by Udi Aharoni, CEO and Academic Director of LAHAV Executive Education; joint Manager of the Eli Hurvitz Institute of Strategic Management at the Coller School of Management, Tel Aviv University and SICC Director.

In his opening address, Prof. Moshe Zviran, Dean of the Coller School of Management, stressed the importance of the competition: "The Sofaer International Case Competition is part of our broad range of international activities at the Coller School, and part of the academic cooperation with leading business schools abroad, in research, teaching and student exchange. Importantly, it exposes the participants to the spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation that has led to Israel being called the Startup Nation, and to its ground-breaking technological environment.  

According to Yair Seroussi, Chairman of Bank Hapoalim "The technological solutions that in the past were associated with the hi-tech and telecommunications sectors of the economy, are today being implemented in the traditional industries, including transportation, which has undergone profound changes and today arouses the interest of giant corporations that deal with advanced solutions to transportation issues, such as Mobileye, Uber and Google.  Even though Foresight is just starting out, it is based on proven technology that will enable it to penetrate global markets in a very short space of time."

Udi Aharoni,  said in rounding off the competition: "All the participating teams presented high-quality and very professional innovative strategic solutions from many different perspectives.  Foresight, the company that was the focus of the competition, benefited from the international brainstorming of outstanding MBA students from among the best universities in the world.  They presented new understandings and suggestions for developing the company, some of which will be adopted and will influence the long-term strategic development of the Foresight."

Registration for the 13^th SICC, which will be held in May 2017, will open in the next few weeks on the competition website:  https://en-coller.tau.ac.il/SICC

Anat
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SOURCE Coller School of Management, Tel Aviv University