A University of Warwick team - The Invincible – was declared UK champions of the Hobsons Global Management Challenge at this week’s national final in London.

The Invincible team - Captain Geoffrey Lee, Joan Lee and Kwong Lam To, who are all second-year MORSE students, will now go on to the finals in Macau China in April.

Geoffrey, on receiving the £4,600 prize for his team, said: “The results were quite tight between us and the other teams. We were really surprised to be announced the winning team. Over the past six months we have learned a lot about strategic thinking, and the importance of being relaxed and making calm decisions. What's our strategy for the international final? Not to crash the company!

“The Challenge gave us the opportunity to gain valuable transferable skills such as business awareness, management and team working skills; it has been a thrilling experience.”

Of the eight teams who made it to the National Final five were from Warwick and the rest were from Manchester, Nottingham and Southampton.

Team member, Joan Lee, says “Our business started off badly with production not meeting demand, advertising budget spent on the wrong product etc., but we soon got the hang of it and systematically analysed the data.

“Our team was first in group in the first and second rounds and we would definitely love to win the competition.”

Student teams have been competing since October 2006, with over 1,000 students playing the competition. The Global Management Challenge (GMC) is a strategic online business game, where student teams run a virtual company. Students submit decisions relating to key areas of their business – such as HR, finance and marketing.

The teams played the game ‘live’ submitting five decisions - representing a year-and-a-quarter of their business. This information is then fed into a sophisticated simulator, determining which teams have progressed to the next round. The final set of data was analysed at the end of the day, with team Invincible excelling to the top of the league with a share price of 1.528 on the virtual stock exchange.

The team will now go on to play against 23 other countries in the International Final in Macau, China on 24/25 April. The global winner will be crowned Best Virtual Business Manager in the World.

Warwick Runners Up

Bright Spark

• Jody Marsden
• Matt Wilkinson
• Tessa Langley
• Tom Middleton
  

DoesGreyMatter

• Xiangjun Shen: MORSE Finalist
• Nikko Xiadan Huang: MORSE Finalist
• Daisy Xiaoju Wang: MORSE Finalist
• Yifei Lee: MORSE Finalist
• Junhui Huang: MORSE Finalist

VirtualVision

• Linan Chen: 2nd year MORSE
  
• Laura Qinzhi Li: 2nd year MORSE
• Rui Xin Lee: 2nd year MORSE
• Tze Ken Chua: 2nd year MORSE

WarwickWiseGuys

• Kishan Popat: 4th year Computer Systems Engineer
• Aparna Patil: 3rd year MORSE
• Felix Fritz: 4th year Manufacturing Engineering and Management
• Sakshi Agarwal: 4th year Manufacturing Engineering and Management
• Asim Shah: 4th year Manufacturing Engineering and Management