Wondering what it takes to win Polit Case Competition? We chatted with the winners of PCC 2020, Holger Juul Harmsen, Isabella De Lellis Stroustrup and Ida Nordin Christensen, about their experience with solving the case and what advice they might give to the 2021 case solvers.
How was it to participate and what did you gain from participating in the PCC?
Participating in the case competition was stressful and challenging but at the same time extremely educational. We learned a lot during the eight-hour case solving and being under time pressure pushed us to work harder than expected. It was inspirational talking to the partners from BCG and Copenhagen Airport and great to get some very useful feedback during the case solving.
How did your team find the level of difficulty of the case?
We found the level of difficulty of the case very suiting and the theme very relevant for our studies. The given data was great for calculating changes in behavior and profits and we were happy that we could use a lot of our knowledge and skills from the lectures to solve the case. This definitely made the experience greater for us.
Though at the same time we were definitely uncertain before the case; would we be able to compete on a par with the other teams? We knew that a lot of the other students participating were very talented as well as further in their studies and more experienced than us, which was surely challenging. It was great, however, to experience that everybody would still be able to participate somewhat competitively without much prior experience. Would definitely recommend it!
What was your approach to solving this case as a team?
To be honest, we were not very productive the first couple of hours - we were struggling to get the full perspective of how to tackle the case, and we realized that we could probably have planned the process a bit better beforehand. As we took a step back and tried to gain a more structured overview, however, some approaches and ideas began to materialize as we dove into the data and we were able to go ahead with some of our hypotheses. After we found a structure, we were able to more efficiently split tasks between us and each work on our respective parts of the analyses. The last half of the case was thus extremely intense and we barely managed to squeeze in bathroom- or eating-breaks (much like that of an econometrics exam :)). We did not really manage to finish before time ran out, which the observant reader might be able to spot here and there in the final slide deck.
What would your recommendation to other case solvers be when they are considering joining the world of case solving?
Prepare, prepare, prepare. We had no case-solving experience beforehand what so ever. It would probably have benefitted us a lot if we had worked through a case process a couple of times together first, for a couple of different reasons. First, we could have established a clearer division of labor beforehand; who works the data, who writes the slides, etc. Focusing only on one’s own section beforehand is much more manageable and time-efficient than everyone getting the same full overview and then dividing tasks. Second, we could have prepared a pre-made slidedeck with some solid templates and frameworks to use in different possible analyses. To be honest, it would probably be possible to fit a lot of different case analyses within a rather small range of different pre-made slide frameworks - at least for an 8-hour case competition. Third, fourth and fifth: Learn about the 80/20 rule, do not work with the same accuracy as in your real job, and be blindly confident in your answers in the Q&A-section. They do not know that you have no idea.
All in all, we would recommend to prep and cut out as much groundwork as possible beforehand, so that you would only have to focus on solving the case itself during the allotted time.
Now that you have gotten some tips and tricks from the winners for PCC 2020 don’t forget to head over and sign up for PCC RISE.