MBA Students Win Second Place at Strategy Case Competition

A team of four Georgetown McDonough MBA students won second place at the 2020 Illinois Gies MBA Strategy Case Competition. The competition, hosted by the University of Illinois Gies College of Business, challenged students to present recommendations that addressed real-life issues at Facebook involving user privacy and content curation. 

The competition lasted 24 hours and consisted of two rounds, with the top four teams of 13 total progressing to the final round. Georgetown’s team consisted of Stephanie Burns (MBA’21), Luis Font (MBA’20), Mitanshi Garg (MBA’21), and Kavish Munim (MBA’20).

The Georgetown students presented two strategies for a hypothetical Facebook board as part of the case. In the first, they recommended adding a payment model like LinkedIn where users can pay for a premium membership that would exclude their data from being used by Facebook. 

The second strategy addressed content curation, where Facebook could create a viral score tool that would track suspicious content and encourage users to flag content as well. The team also recommended eliminating the micro-targeting of political ads. 

“The case helped me learn how to work with high-performing teammates under stressful, deadline-driven situations while ensuring high-quality outcomes. It also helped me put my creative and analytical hat on in order to come up with potential solutions,” Munim said.