RIC 业务 Students Achieve 98th Percentile in International Competition

一群管理专业的学生，玛雅·康诺利, Carolina Menendez and Jeffrey Taveras (pictured from left to right in photo above) – recently vied with almost 7,000 other international teams in the Spring 2024 Capstone Simulation Competition. By the seventh round, the team ranked in the 98th percentile.

“This is the first time since COVID that our students were able to achieve this result,” says Associate 教授essor of Management Jiyun吴, 谁指导学生. 

“This makes me feel like we’re back and that our students are again demonstrating extraordinary tenacity and abilities,她说。.

The rules of the competition is that each team owns their own company and competes with five other companies in the same industry. 目标是超越你的竞争对手. 

The competition runs for eight weeks, with one round per week. The team with the best overall performance wins the round. Winning is determined by a company’s financial performance, 他们对顾客的满意度如何, how internally efficient they are and how well they were able to learn and grow. 

最终, the goal is for students to take all the strategic management skills they’ve gained and apply it in a simulated business environment.

Connolly, Menendez and Taveras admit that they are highly competitive people. From the start, each made known to their teammates that they were in it to win it. 

During the first three rounds, their company performed well. But by the fourth round, they made a decision that almost put them out of business.

“我们提高了价格，”梅内德斯说. “By the morning, we found that we had gone from 10 percent positive to a negative 51 percent.”

绝望的, 团队给吴发了邮件, asking if she could reset (restart) the round and let them do the round again with corrected decisions.

“我说，‘不. I think you can come back from this,’” Wu says. “我本可以把他们救出来的, but I said ‘no’ to a reset because I knew they had a strong foundation – they were dedicated, 驱动, they had good communication and they worked well as a team. 我知道他们能恢复过来. They made a major mistake, but they could correct the mistake and get back on the path.”

“So, we went back to the books, reading all that Dr. 梅内德斯说. “然后我们实施了.”

到第五回合时，他们开始反败为胜. 到第六回合时，他们看到了很大的进步. By round seven they performed their best, scoring in the 98th percentile. 在第八轮比赛中，他们也表现出色.

“I think we learned more from that one mistake in round four than we learned from the entire simulation,梅内德斯说.

“For one, I learned how volatile business can be,” says Taveras. “仅仅一个决定就可能导致重大的混乱.”

“And there is no one correct strategy,” says Connolly. “You have to change your strategy as you go along. We thought that raising our prices would get us more sales. 它实际上使我们蒙受了损失.”

“在行业中取胜都是相对的，”吴说. “If you’re doing better than other companies, you’re winning. 这是由你的累积利润决定的, stock price and your return on equity – the money you make for your investors. For me, in this class, if they reach the 90th percentile, they’re really outstanding.”

Looking back, the team credits their success to teamwork and to their professor.

“我最看重的是. Wu gave us the tools, but she never gave us the answer,梅内德斯说. “If someone tells you, ‘Do it this way,’ you don’t learn. 你只是在剪切和粘贴. 但博士. Wu really challenged us to think critically and analytically and then to go for it.”

Carolina Menendez, age 34, is a returning adult student. Menendez took a 10-year break from RIC in 2010 for family reasons and is graduating this May. She is lead for a team in the Prior Authorization unit of the Lifespan Cancer Institute at Rhode Island Hospital.

Maya Connolly, age 25, transferred to RIC from CCRI and is also a graduating senior. She works as a customer service manager for Adams Hometown Market.

Jeffrey Taveras, age 24, is a graduating senior who transferred to RIC from URI. He has applied to World Wrestling Entertainment, 总部设在斯坦福德, CT, with the hopes of gaining an internship and building a business career from there.