Smeal MBA Sustainability Case Competition Winners
Smeal College of Business is pleased to announce the winners of the MBA Sustainability Case Competition for Fall 2022.
Since 2016, the national Smeal MBA Sustainability Case Competition has engaged over 1,000 MBA and graduate students in business, challenging them to engage with today's greatest opportunities for environmental and social innovation through business. We are passionate about giving students hands-on experience using the tools of business to advance social justice and environmental protection. That's what our case competition is all about.
How Our Case Competition Works
Our case competition is organized to maximize student participation and learning.
The competition consisted of two rounds
The preliminary round consists of electronic submissions of case analyses--there were 20 teams participating this year
There are Q&A sessions for all teams with the client and organizers
A panel of faculty reviewers select five semi-finalist teams
Five finalist teams competed for first ($10,000), second ($5,000), and third place ($2,500) prizes on November 18th
Teams cannot put any school-identifying information on any submitted material and cannot tell the judges what school they are from at the finals
Listen to what past participants have said
The Focus of This Year's Case: Carbon Offsets
This year's case competition was sponsored by IBM and focused on the business response to climate change. Global carbon dioxide concentrations stand at 416 parts per million (ppm) and evidence of a changing climate is all around us with devastating human consequences. On one hand, companies are taking action - or at least making commitments - in a wide variety of areas. Many companies are investing in - or planning to - carbon offsets to meet climate targets, a market the consultancy McKinsey estimates will grow by a factor of 15 by 2030 to become a $30 - 50 billion industry. At the same time, there has been increasing scrutiny of carbon offsets that points to data that not all carbon offsets are created equally.
This year's competition featured inspired projects with finalists from Michigan State University, Penn State University, The University of Chicago, and the University of North Carolina.
And the Winner(s) Are...
First place: The Pennsylvania State University Smeal College of Business
Second place: The University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School
Third place: The University of Chicago Booth School of Business
Congratulations to all the participating teams! We are already looking forward to next year.