Lufthansa Case Competition

On November 3, a few of my classmates and I joined together to form a case competition team. We were competing with other teams from SOM on a case presented by Lufthansa airlines. After a long weekend together, our team put together a great proposal and was chosen for the finals. This is where the story gets exciting. The finals were to be held on Long Island on November 17. If we were chosen as the grand prize winners, we would each receive round-trip airfare to Europe! So, we put in a great amount of time and effort going into the finals and were very prepared. Our presentation went great and we thought we were in good shape to win. However, that wasn't to be. We ended up finishing in second place by one point. It turns out that we had the best presentation and all of the judges wanted us to win, but we were missing a major component of the case requirement: revenue generated through the implementation of our recommendations. We couldn't believe because we considered this and decided that "if you can't do it right, don't do it at all." Our team couldn't do it right because we didn't have enough data available! With that said, our team learned a significant lesson and we walked away with a nice new suitcase.

Basketball Hall of Fame

On Sunday my wife took me to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts. We decided to celebrate my birthday about a month early because we will most likely be celebrating someone else's inaugural birthday around the time of my 27th. We had a great time, to say the least. The Hall is comprised of three floors. The top floor is the Ring of Honor. Each inductee's accomplishments is highlighted with the other players, coaches, or contributors from their induction class. The rules of the game are also chronologically discussed. The second floor is very interactive. I measured my wingspan, call a play as a radio announcer, recapped the day's action as an ESPN sportscaster, and made the call as a referee (I was 5 of 5 and the program asked if I ever considered a career in officiating - little do they know). Also on the second floor were shoes, balls, statues, jerseys and displays about the development of the game. Great teams and coaches were also highlighted. The main floor was a full size basketball court with regulation NBA hoops at each end. Along the sides of the court was the progression of hoops, from a peach basket without a backboard to a glass backboard with a breakaway rim.

We continued to celebrate with a great dinner in New Haven at Soul de Cuba. The food and environment were fantastic. After dinner, we went to small group and ate birthday cake (chocolate with bananas in the middle) and ice cream. Overall, it was a great day!

PepsiCo Presentation

The latest corporate presentation I attended here at Yale was for Pepsi. We were fortune to have our most illustrious alum give the presentation. Indra Nooyi is the president and chief executive officer of PepsiCo, which is the world's fourth-largest food and beverage company. On August 14, 2006 she was named the next to succeed Steve Reinemund as chief executive officer of the company. Reinemund, 58, retired on October 1, 2006. And speaking of Steve Reinemund, he is now the Chairman of the Board at Pepsi (Indra's boss, so to speak) and will be speaking at the Yale School of Management Christian Business Conference in February. Check out the link below, which details Indra's #1 most powerful businesswoman ranking according to Fortune Magazine (she is ranked #4 in Forbes). She was extremely impressive at the presentation and my respect for her increased greatly.