MHC team off to biz competition

Four business students are off to Kelowna to represent Medicine Hat College at the annual Western Canadian Business Competition.

“We’re all really excited ... we’ve all been working hard and trying to understand the different (business) strategies,” said Nilanjana Pahl, a fourth-year student enrolled in MHC’s business administration degree program run through a partnership with Mount Royal University.

The competition this year takes place from March 8-11 at Okanagan College, with teams from western post-secondary institutions “running” a business over a hypothetical eight-year time frame.

This year, the “business” is manufacturing wearable video cameras that can be equipped to drones, said Pahl, and they have to make choices about pricing, marketing, web development, third-party retailers and more. For eight rounds, their choices are inputted into an online simulation and they see the impact — such as share values — “almost instantaneously.”

The simulation also increases the scale so businesses are “competing” in a global market place, she said.

For Pahl, the exciting part of the competition is putting four years of schoolwork and learning theory into practice.

“I think it’s really important because you need to understand more than just the onpaper theoreticals of strategy and what that means to actually implementing it into an a real-life business,” she said

Accompanying the team is faculty adviser Glen Allan.

“Glen has been really great in walking through benefits and risks of various strategies,” said Pahl, adding they’re excited to see what other teams have learned, and how MHC measures up.