Second silver finish for BTM Case Team in less than a month

March 31, 2021

Hot off their strong second place semi-final finish at the CaseIT competition at Simon Fraser University, the Wilfrid Laurier University Bachelor of Business Technology Management case team brought home another silver medal from British Columbia, coming in second at the 4th annual Royal Roads Design Thinking Challenge (RRDTC).

Differentiating itself from other case competitions, the RRDTC encourages team-to-team collaboration and provides competitors with the opportunity to deliver feedback on each other’s design thinking processes.

This year’s client was the Wilderness Tourism Association of BC (WTA). Teams were asked to explore solutions focusing on addressing the impact of COVID-19 on the adventure tourism industry of British Columbia.

Once again, BTM students in the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics, Kaitlyn Hall, Logan Naudi, Romane Ng and Cassandra Pike put their extensive hours of practice to good use and proposed a series of novel solutions to the judges during the multi-stage competition.

“During the first round, we presented three solutions in an eight-minute video format – creating a content marketing campaign, partnering with Airbnb, and developing a digital health passport while collaborating with other WTA members to create experience bundles,” explains Ng.

The second round required teams to focus on one of their proposed solutions, “so we decided to further develop our Airbnb proposal,” says Ng.

“For the final round, the judges challenged us to choose a specific customer segment to focus on,” adds Pike. “We tested our ideas and developed a plan focused specifically on the silver economy of rovers and vacationers over 50 years old. Our plan included a targeted marketing campaign and leveraging the partnership between the WTA and Indigenous Tourism BC to create a stronger alliance that benefitted from each other’s resources,” says Pike.

The strategy of collaboration comes naturally for the members of the Laurier Case Team, many of whom, like Hall, joined the team to expand their personal business knowledge.

“By the end, my favourite thing about participating in case competitions is the development you get to be part of as a team,” says Hall. “Over the past seven months of practice, we got to know how each other thinks and works, where our strengths are, and where our areas of improvement lie. Overall, I am very proud of our team for our performance in our 2021 case competitions,” says Hall.

Central to the team’s focus and success has been coach Josephine McMurray, faculty advisor for case@BTM and associate professor of Business Technology Management and Health Studies.

“I got involved in case competitions mainly because of case@BTM, which professor McMurray would hold after class for bonus marks,” explains Naudi. “Through my participation in those after-class cases, I learned I really like the analysis portion of cases and found it helped build my presentation skills.”

From the those after-class case analysis sessions, McMurray was able to assemble an outstanding group of individuals who quickly became a high-functioning team.

“I can’t tell you how proud I am of the commitment, creativity and resilience this team has shown by taking on two national case competitions in one month while carrying full course loads,” says McMurray. “They are truly an inspiration to myself and the entire Laurier community.”

The Lazaridis School congratulates the BTM case team on their outstanding performance and wishes them the best of luck in their post-Laurier endeavours. For more information about the Lazaridis BTM program, visit our website.