Rutgers Business School to host its first biopharmaceutical case competition

Teams from 11 business schools, including Georgetown and Columbia, have signed up to compete in the school's first biopharmaceutical case competition.

The day-long competition will be held November 10 at Rutgers Business School's $83 million facility, 1 Washington Park, at Rutgers University's campus in Newark, New Jersey.

The teams will be competing for cash prizes as well as the recognition of some of the industry's leading companies.

"It brings another layer of national exposure to the school,'' said Chris Parker, a Rutgers MBA student who competed at Kellogg School of Management earlier this year.  As co-president of the pharmaceutical club, Parker helped to organize the competition being hosted by Rutgers.

Parker said Rutgers will follow what has become "the gold standard'' for pharmaceutical case competitions: Each team will have a week to prepare after receiving a case study that reflects a current, real-life marketing or operational issue faced by the industry.

The teams will be judged on their presentations by a panel made up of representatives from each of the seven companies that have agreed to sponsor the competition.

"It's very intense. There's a lot of ground to cover in a short time,'' Parker said. "But it's a chance to bring your expertise to life in a way the interview process does not bring to light."

Rutgers won last year at Kellogg School of Management, one of the premiere case competitions in the country. And Parker helped a team from Rutgers Business School win honorable mention at Kellogg's competition earlier this year.

The case competitions provide students with an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and skills to prospective employers and to network among both students and industry professionals. Leading pharmaceutical and healthcare companies, which often sponsor the events, use the events to identify new talent.  

Julie Oka, a Rutgers MBA student who serves with Parker as co-president of the school's pharmaceutical club, said the corporate sponsors backing the event at Rutgers helped to attract teams from some of the country's leading business schools. "These competitions are recruiting tools for the companies. People get jobs out of these competitions,'' she said. 

Mahmud Hassan, a professor in the pharmaceutical management program, said the competitions serve multiple purposes, including marketing Rutgers to prospective students who want to concentrate their MBA studies in pharmaceutical management. 

"It's a good thing for the companies to see talent in one place,'' Hassan said, "but for us, it's also a way of letting the top-ranked business schools know we're a player in this industry, that our students are also top-ranked.''

Teams from the following schools will participate: Boston University, School of Management, Columbia Business School, Duke University's Fuqua School of Management, George Washington University's School of Business and Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business.

There will also be teams from New York University's Stern School of Business, Pennsylvania State University's Smeal College of Business, University of Connecticut's School of Business, University of Rochester's Simon Graduate School of Business and Wake Forest University's School of Business.  

The event is being sponsored by some of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies: Bayer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eisai, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Novartis and Campbell-Alliance, a leading consultant to the biopharmaceutical and medical technology industries.

Parker said getting seven companies to sign on as sponsors was a huge factor in attracting so many teams and teams from some of the country's top-ranked business schools.

"We have seven leading companies sponsoring the competition,'' Parker said, "that gives a prominence to what we're doing.'' 

SOURCE Rutgers Business School