Huizenga MBA Students Earn Top 20 Worldwide Ranking in Competition

Six graduate students from the H. Wayne Huizenga School of Business and Entrepreneurship have earned a top 20 worldwide ranking for their performance in an Internet-based competition. Over 320 schools from across the globe compete in the BSG-Online interactive game. Students who participate are from areas including Canada , Australia , Mexico , Japan and the United States .

“You should be quite proud of your students for such an excellent performance—a performance that reflects quite well on you and the caliber of instruction that students are receiving in your course,” said the authors of BSG-Online to Huizenga School Professor, Rodolfo Silberstein, Ph.D.

The Huizenga School opted to incorporate the interactive game into the coursework of the final class required to complete the MBA program, which is taught by Silberstein. He has utilized the concept of bringing real-world business strategies into the classroom through this interactive game, as it is designed to simulate the growth and development of real-life companies and presents students with business-related scenarios that involve a wide range of business concepts.

“To succeed in this game, a student must have a complex understanding of all business strategies and concepts ranging from finance, human resources, manufacturing to administration. All of these concepts take place in the real-world, and that's why 60% of the student's grade for the class is based on how well they perform in the game. Their success in the game reflects how prepared they are to meet the demands of the real business world,” said Silberstein.

The Huizenga School students have succeeded in having top 20 worldwide rankings each semester the game has been played via the Internet-format. Each semester includes 9 rounds, one each week.

“It is the most successful interactive game right now on the market,” Said Silberstein.

Students partner up into teams of 2-3 people to form “companies,” and the companies compete against each other each week. These competitions involve business-related scenarios, and each team must work to create a strategic plan that will help them gain success over the competition. The games take place every week and rankings are compiled each Monday, when the prior week's 20 best-performing companies worldwide are announced. The rankings are based on each of the following four measures: Overall Score, Earnings Per Share, Return On Average Equity, and Stock Price.

All companies that appear on a Global Top 20 list during a polling week are automatically eligible to compete in the 2005 Season II Best Strategy Invitational. All company co-managers who enter the invitational will receive a Distinguished Participant Certificate, which provides the necessary documentation for students to list their participation on their résumé. The instructors of the BSI Grand Champions will be given a place of honor in the BSG-Online Hall of Fame. Silberstein is one of the few professors who have been inducted into the Hall of Fame.

The Huizenga School students, and their company name and ranking include:

• Dream Team (D Company) : Suzanne Connor and David Kennedy. Earned a Global Top 20 ranking with the Overall Game-To-Date Score of 109.0, which was the 9th best Overall Score performance of the week, worldwide.

• E Company: Kaysia Clarke and Sonja Phinn. Earned a Global Top 20 ranking in the Return on Average Equity category with a score of 33.8%, which ranked them 20th worldwide.

• Gigantic Company (G Company): Kaduri Sassoon and Chante Sutton. Earned a Global Top 20 ranking in the Return on Average Equity category with a score of 34.0%, which ranked them 19th worldwide.