Business students tackle the future at Spring 2022 Integrated Case Exercise

Sept. 21, 2022

Once again, Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) students at the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics impressed judges during the 2022 Spring Integrated Case Exercise (ICE). This competition has been challenging third-year business students since 1977 and remains one of the most foundational, and memorable, experiences of every undergraduate business student’s time at Wilfrid Laurier University. 

Acting Dean, Shelley McGill, shared that, “ICE is a flagship event that is ahead of its time. We’ve been bringing the real world to our students through ICE for more than 40 years.”

Students participating in ICE have the unique opportunity to work with a real company on an existing business challenge they are facing. It is a 10-day competition where teams endeavour to develop and present the winning recommendation for the case company; a company that is only revealed six days before teams are scheduled to present.  

This year’s case company was RWI Synthetics. RWI enables their clients to tackle complex and critical issues by using 3D synthetic models where they provide different scenarios, calculating impacts and outcomes for decision-making. Each synthetic model brings to life the emergent intersections between humans, technologies, systems, and futures so that decision makers can plan and act with certainty based on quantified information. RWI is a proudly Canadian, women-led, Certified Aboriginal Business based in Edmonton, Alberta.

Throughout ICE, students utilize the knowledge they have gained in all their classes for each functional area - from finance to marketing, operations to accounting - to build proposals and ready themselves for the first round of presentations. This Spring, RWI asked students to find ways for the company to grow to $10 million in revenue in the next three years while continuing to attract new talent and preserving its entrepreneurial culture.

Eighty teams of five or six students each participated this term and through rigorous competition, the final four teams were chosen.

The Finals

The top four teams were asked to present their best recommendations along with practical suggestions for how to implement them to the judging panel. This year’s panel featured six representatives from RWI, including Myrna Bittner, CEO Founder; Dean Bittner, Founder; George Staikos, Chief Revenue Officer; Armaghan Taghvaei, Lead 3D Designer & Motion Graphic Artist; Niloofar Manafi, Technical Project Coordinator and Synthetic Modeller; and Masoud Bozorg Bigdeli, Data Scientist.

The four finalist teams brought forward some impressive ideas and the decision of who would prevail was a challenging one.

“We just wanted to thank you so much for all of your hard work and energy and incredible creativity and a huge amount of braveness in the considerations and new proposals,” said Bittner as she addressed the finalists from the judging panel. “We were in awe. It was a very difficult choice to make.”

Despite the strong performance of the other teams, Team 68 came out on top and earned the first-place trophy. They suggested an “analyze, apply, act” approach to success whereby RWI should, analyze the internal and external environment, apply insights to evaluate potential alternatives, and act on the strategy by implementing detailed plans.

They also suggested RWI consider the public sector customer segment. The team of students suggested this segment could provide them with a $2.3-trillion opportunity that also aligns with the organizations social good value, leverages proven synthetic city models and would let them benefit from localized and human factors.

The Lazaridis School congratulates Team 68 members, Ciarra Collison, Neel Shah, Min-Kyu Lee, Georgia Bryson, and Anusaanth Sivakumaran on their outstanding performance at Spring ICE 2022!