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News Release

Last modified: Tuesday, January 18, 2005

IU Kelley School MBAs take home Global Prize Trophy in international A.T. Kearney case competition

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University's Kelley School of Business earned the Global Prize title in one of the most prestigious MBA case competitions in the world, A.T. Kearney's Global Prize Case Competition. This was the first time that the school had fielded a team in the competition held annually since 1997 by the Chicago-based global management consulting firm.

Four first-year students in Kelley's Master of Business Administration program competed via teleconference against Manchester Business School, the European Global Prize winner, in the final round held last month.

The winning Kelley team members and recipients of the Global Prize trophy were Edzra Gibson of Detroit; Scott Kleman of Edgewood, Ky.; Kristen Wagner of Martinsville, Ind.; and Jason Woods of Grand Rapids, Mich. The team also earned $4,000 as the winner of the campus competition and $10,000 as the winner of the North American Global Prize on their way to winning the international title.

Since 1996, Kelley MBA program teams have placed in the top three in more than 25 national case competitions.

Teams from 10 competitive MBA programs were selected to participate, including those from the Harvard Business School, the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, MIT's Sloan School of Management, the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and graduate business schools at Columbia University, the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan and the University of Western Ontario in Canada.

On the IU Bloomington campus, eight teams competed for the right to represent IU in the regional competition in Chicago on Nov. 20, 2004, by interviewing role-playing consultants, submitting a 10-page written recommendation and giving a 15-minute final presentation. One team from each competing school went on to vie for the title "North American Champion" as judged by senior A.T. Kearney leadership.

Paul Friga, IU assistant professor of management and co-director of the Kelley Consulting Academy, serves as the coach for the winning Kelley team and other case competition teams at Kelley. Friga said the winning team worked extremely hard and believed that its comprehensive analysis, clarity and teamwork were differentiating factors.

"It's fantastic to see Kelley students demonstrate global consulting capabilities," Friga said. "We look forward to the challenge of defending our title next year. This prestigious case competition is a wonderful learning opportunity for Kelley MBAs."

Scott A. Kleman, Kelley MBA student and member of the winning team, added, "This case was important because of the caliber of competition and the broad understanding of business functions that was required to develop a sound business model and implementation plan. To win such a prestigious award so early in my business school career will be hard to top."

The Kelley School of Business' degree programs have been among the finest available for more than 80 years. Its MBA degree program has been a fixture in Business Week magazine's listing of the top 20 programs and now ranks 18th. Other recent recognition for the school included the Princeton Review's No. 1 ranking for "best-quality" MBA teaching.

A.T. Kearney is one of the world's largest management consulting firms. With a global presence that includes more than 60 offices in 37 countries, spanning major and emerging markets, A.T. Kearney provides strategic, operational, organizational and technology consulting, and executive search services to the world's leading companies. A.T. Kearney is the high-value management consulting subsidiary of global services leader EDS.

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