The first Case Study Competition

Podravka's team of young experts won the first Croatian Case Study Competition held in Zagreb.

The Alumni Club of the Business School Bled, an association of former students of the MBA programme of the Business School Bled organised the first Croatian Case Study Competition. The goal of the competition was to increase the capacity of analytic thinking and team work and extend the knowledge of potential young managers of the leading Croatian companies using simulations of real business problems.

Representatives of Croatian companies Cemex d.d., Končar elektroindustrija d.d., Mercator, Croatian telecom, Hewlett-Packard, Pliva d.d. and Podravka d.d. measured their strength in this competition. According to the rules, teams were comprised of young, highly educated experts and diverse in terms of education and experience (production, sales, marketing etc.). The criteria for selecting Podravka’s team of young experts for this competition were the results achieved so far at Podravka, based on the monitoring by the Human Resources and Law sector. Podravka’s team consisted of marketing manager Neven Sitar, head of exports to West European markets Damir Šmigmator, head of the business analysis team at Strategic Development Rebeka Pejković, head of the Employment department at Human Resources and Law Tihana Vrhovski, specialist for application development in the IT department Robert Rac and technologist at Quality Control and Technology Development Renata Zorko.

The task placed before the teams demanded 24 hour work on presenting solutions of a particular business problem, the situation that the Slovenian company Gorenje found itself in 2002 when their long-time director retired. Podravka’s team worked off a colourful presentation which impressed the jury. Simple and clear graphical displays were accompanied with a reliable implementation and the responses to the jury’s questions were prompt and confident, proving that the Podravka team had absolutely mastered the matter. Rebeka Pejković did an excellent job defending her team’s strategy connected to Gorenje’s approach to markets offering constructive answers to all the challenging questions from the jury.

Podravka’s team has raised the notch to higher standards for the next competition with this year’s successful taking part and victory over severe competitors in the finals of the first Case Study Competition.

- It was a great honour being elected by team members to present the solution for Podravka’s team. I think that winning first place justified their trust in me. It was a pleasure to work with colleagues and I hope that next year Podravka will repeat this accomplishment, says Rebeka Pejković.