Your Fearless Leader

Meet Todd Valentine, Committee Chair for the 7th Annual International Tech Strategy Business Case Competition.

Todd is pursuing the MS-MBA with a Strategy and Business Analysis concentration. He interned with VMware over the summer in their Cambridge office. Before coming to BU, he was an account executive for a media and entertainment company based in Denver, Colorado with accounts from Finland to Australia. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Technical Journalism from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colorado. He enjoys camping, cooking, and watching movies.



Save the Date

The 7th Annual International Tech Strategy Business Case Competition will be held March 29-31, 2012.

Do you have what it takes?

And the Winners are ....

Fun and Work with Ericsson Executives

Thanks to the committee

This group of dedicated committee members have truly outdone themselves. From making sure every team knows where to go, to manning top-secret envelopes, to supporting their fellow classmates with high fives and back slaps, they've made sure every minute of this weekend was on track. Nate, Chair of the Commitee, personally spent three months pouring hard work into organizing the 2011 Tech Strategy Competition. His leadership has translated seamlessly. Let's give the entire 2011 committee a big THANK YOU for all of their hard work, and for making this one of the most fun Tech Strategy Competitions in a long time. Great work guys.

Presentations Come to a Close!

The fourth team, Ericsson Jakarta, just completed their presentation and the case competition has come to a close! The judges had a barrage of questions that made a some audience members raise their eyebrows. But the team answered every question, no matter how difficult, without missing a beat. Great job guys!

Now the only thing left to do is announce the winners. Oh, and finally have a drink to celebrate a successful competition. The reception is happening now on the 4th floor. See you there!

Final Case Competition Presentations Underway!

The final four case presentations are underway in the auditorium. Students have 20 minutes to present their cases and then 10 minutes for Q&A from the judges. Team Ericsson Santiago made the first presentation look effortless, delivering their presentation with confidence after 32 hours of non-stop work. They handled questions from the judges around competitive landscapes, timelines and budgets. Great work Ericsson Santiago!

Not much longer now until the winner will be announced, and four students will be $25,000 richer.

Team Ericsson Santiago presents their work in front of four judges and more than 60 students from around the globe.

What's Your Favorite App?

Andrew MacDonald and Abishek Chopra of Team 6 joked during the collaboration round presentations after giving a flawless presentation to the judges.

"After the case competition, I wasn't looking forward to this project. But this turned out to be so much more interesting and fun that I thought it would be."

Andrew and Abishek had two Ericsson employees working with them during the collaboration round. They helped the students keep their big ideas in check, and focus their presentation. And they got the students engaged, refreshing their tired minds by facilitating their new ideas and new people in the room.They had a lot of ideas to start with, but both students were suprised at how easily a group of six students who've never met before could work together.

"People were really receptive to eachother's ideas. It was so great to see our exchange of ideas get connected," MacDonald said.

But both, who had only gotten 1 hour of sleep the night before, agreed that the case competition was much harder than the collaboration round. But they were running on adrenaline fumes and had stopped caring about sleep.

So while they were busy developing new apps. for Ericsson to transform the health care industry with, I wanted to know what were their favorite apps on their iPhones?

"Definitely the Bloomberg app.," Andrew said.
"Yeah, LinkedIn and Facebook are the best," Abishek said.

Four Final Teams Announced!

Congratulations to the four final teams who will advance to the final presentations at 5 PM! The teams will present their cases to a new set of judges: Arun Bhikshesvaran, Martin Zander, and Andreea Timberlake of Ericsson, and George Thomas of IBM. Thank you again to our judges!

And the final four are, in no particular order....(drumroll please)!

1. Ericsson Santiago
2. Ericsson Beijing
3. Ericsson Budapest
4. Ericsson Jakarta

Collaboration Comes Full Circle

The collaboration round presentations are underway right now! The atrium is buzzing with students in suits and spectators who've come out to show their support. After 30 hours of competition, this is the final lap for these talented students.

13 teams are presenting their work to two Ericsson judges, with just four minutes to explain how their app will revolutionize either the health care of energy industry using mobile + broadband + cloud technologies.

The ideas presented were limitless! Here are just four examples of the creative solutions these innovative teams came up with in just four hours:

• Team 1 proposed that patients will no longer need to interact with doctors physically. With their app. patients could diagnose themselves, send their symptoms to the cloud and then doctors can access this information and prescribe medicines proactively. Pretty cool huh?
• Team 2 recommended developing an end-user app. that would smartly manage your energy consumption using Facebook as a platform! The app. would offer real-time data and allow users to remotely manage facilities.
• Team 5 focused on the nonprofit sector, suggesting an app. that would broker communications across language and expertise barriers to enable doctors in more disadvantaged locations to offer more accurate diagnoses, in a real-time format. Think Doctors Without Borders meets social media.
• Team 6 outlined an app. where all users would have their medical data pre-stored on their phones. This app. would automatically share this information with doctors offices, saving 15-20 minutes of patients' time to fill out forms, omitting data errors and streamlining the healthcare paperwork system.

This is just a snapshot of the 13 amazing ideas presented. With just four minutes to get their ideas across, it was a scramble to explain it all to the judges. Some students studdered from sleep deprivation, and others thrived off the adrenaline, delivering flawless presentations.

Thank you to Georges Antoun of Ericsson and Mike Lawson of BU who helped judge their hard work during the collaboration round!