24 Hours with Tanja, Massimiliano and Alberto

A team of Bocconi students recently won the most important international information technology business game in the world, CaseIt, held in Vancouver. In front of a panel of academics and managers in the sector, participants were asked to find a solution to an unpublished case and defend their decisions during the discussion that would follow.

Salviotti with Tanja, Alberto and Massimiliano

During the long weekend from 31 March to 3 April, Tanja Collavo (1st year in the MSc in International Management), Massimiliano Spalazzi (in his 2nd year of the same program) and Alberto Xodo (1st year in the MSc in Marketing Management), led by IT Systems Professor Gianluca Salviotti, beat out 15 other universities from all over the world to become the first European team to win since the competition began in 2004.

"The 24 hours between 9am on 1 April and 9am on the next day were decisive hours," said Tanja. "That was when we were forced to deliberate in our hotel room, using only computers and the material provided by the organization to discuss the case and prepare our presentation slides." "We read the case, worked it out, put a strategy in place, then we reread it, workd it out in a different way, put another strategy in place and so on a few more times," said Alberto, describing a seemingly chaotic process, but one which seems to have worked. "The idea," explained Massimiliano, "was that no one in the team had a specialized and exclusive role. We actually discussed everything several times and each time we all participated, without leaving anything out."

The case wasn't the most clear-cut, as it was divided into two parts. "On one hand," explained Salviotti, the faculty tutor who accompanied the students on their trip to Canada, "they were asked whether to slow down or speed up the implementation of a project. On the other hand the issue was whether to introduce provisions which in the future would skirt all the drawbacks that had affected it." The double timeline and the need to make both an operative decision and a strategic decision made it difficult for several teams.

"The three students were selected out of those who were taking the IT Systems course and who had shown interest in the event, which the International Relations Service had announced," explained Salviotti. None of the three students, however, is specialized in IT, like most of the students from other universities. "Talking with the other participants," said the three students, "we realized that many of them had an engineering background and knew sophisticated IT packets inside and out, so we got a little scared. But the case was definitely more focused on strategy, which gave us the advantage."

"The panel recognized the teamwork involved, the simplicity and elegance of the solutions and the decision and readiness with which they responded to objections," said Salviotti.

Despite the prestige of an event perfectly organized by students at Simon Fraser University ("the professionalism 22- and 23-year old students have shown is truly incredible," the members of the Bocconi team said), Tanja, Massimiliano and Alberto wanted to participate so they could have an international business case game experience with students from around the world, they felt less pressured than most of the Canadian, Asian and US teams. "In some cases," they explained, "you could see how stressed they were and a few teams even skipped the dinner with international speakers on the first day so they could keep training."

Language wasn't a problem for the Italian team either. All three are in programs held in English and they all have international experience on their résumé. According to Alberto and Massimiliano: "During our presentation our only tactic was to let Tanja start and finish, since she speaks English the best."