The MIT Sloan Challenge:



The MIT Sloan Challenge:

Planning, Execution and Analysis of a Student-Run Networking Event

By

Jennifer Houser

B.A. Economics

Haverford College, 1990

and Felipe Payet

B.A. Economics

Yale University, 1991

Submitted to the Alfred P. Sloan School of Management

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Master of Business Administration

at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

May 1999

( 1999 Jennifer Houser and Felipe Payet. All rights reserved.

The authors hereby grant to MIT permission to reproduce

and to distribute publicly paper and electronic

copies of this thesis document in whole or in part.

Signature of Authors

Alfred P. Sloan School of Management

May 13, 1999

Certified by

Nader Tavassoli

Assistant Professor of Management

Thesis Supervisor

Accepted by

Lawrence S. Abeln

Director, The Master's Program

The MIT Sloan Challenge:

Planning, Execution and Analysis of a Student-Run Networking Event

By

Jennifer Houser and Felipe Payet

Submitted to the Alfred P. Sloan School of Management

on May 14, 1999 in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of Master of Business Administration

ABSTRACT

This thesis focuses on the management of a MIT Sloan School of Management fundraising event benefiting a local non-profit charity. The thesis consists of documenting and analyzing the process of creating and executing the event. In the spring of 1998, a group of Sloan students created and hosted the first annual MIT Sloan Challenge -- a business case competition pitting teams of students, business leaders, and faculty against one another. The second Sloan Challenge was held in the spring of 1999, with the organizing team implementing various process improvements for the program.

We focus on the managerial issues surrounding the structuring and execution of the event, including:

- Building a management structure that best supports the event and its goals

- Challenges to and stresses on that working structure

- Changes to the management structure based on previous and on-going experience

- Recommendations for a sustainable management structure

Thesis Supervisor: Nader Tavassoli

Title: Assistant Professor of Management

The MIT Sloan Challenge:

Planning, Execution and Analysis of a Student-Run Networking Event

Table of Contents

Introduction 4

1998 – The Big Event 5

Team 5

Timing of event 7

Strategy 8

Succession 9

1999 - A NEW CHALLENGE 11

Team 11

Timing of event 15

Strategy 20

Succession 22

ANALYSIS & RECOMMENDATIONS 26

Team 26

Timing of event 28

Strategy 30

Succession 33

APPENDIX: 1998 Organizational Chart 35

APPENDIX: 1998 Sponsor List 36

APPENDIX: 1999 Organizational Chart 37

APPENDIX: 1999 Sponsor Categories 38

APPENDIX: 10/6/98 Meeting Minutes 39

APPENDIX: 1999 Mission Statement 40

APPENDIX: 1999 Player Survey Results 41

APPENDIX: Contact Management Database 42

APPENDIX: Company Database 43

APPENDIX: Event-Day Team Database 44

Introduction

The MIT Sloan Challenge is a non-profit fundraising event organized by Sloan students. The goal of the Challenge is to strengthen the school's relationship with the business and local communities. The event consists of a fun, mobile, high-tech game where teams of players are handed a startup/young business to manage for the day. The teams tackle a series of challenging real-world business situations that test essential business skills such as teambuilding, networking, negotiating, marketing, and selling. The competitors are some of the smartest and most successful business leaders, professors and MBA students in the world. Equipped with the latest mobile technologies, participants leave the comforts of the office to face business challenges that unfold throughout the day around the city of Boston. This year, the MIT Sloan Challenge benefits City Year Boston, a non-profit organization that unites young adults for a year of community service and leadership development.

The authors of this thesis are two of the four lead organizers of the 1999 MIT Sloan Challenge. This thesis documents the formulation and growth of our team's management strategy. It begins with a review of the management practices employed during last year's event. Then, it identifies key aspects to be changed this year and analyzes the outcome of those changes. It concludes by outlining recommendations based on this experience for future teams. This thesis is not meant to be a criticism of any organizers, past or present, rather it is a study of the effectiveness of the management strategies.

1998 – The Big Event

The idea for the MIT Sloan Challenge grew out of a discussion within Sloan's New Product and Venture Development (NPVD) Steering Committee in the Fall of 1997. Many committee members were having trouble getting the full-time marketing positions they wanted. As a result of their job search experiences, the committee members felt Sloan graduates were seen as "number crunchers with no team skills" by recruiters and executives. They felt that reputation was unfair, and wanted the school to be recognized for marketing and "soft" skills. They discussed ways to change Sloan's image and liked the idea of having a "big event" that would showcase the students' creativity and breadth of business skills.

The following list outlines and reviews some of the management practices used in the inaugural MIT Sloan Challenge.

Team

In early 1998, one of the most striking aspects of the planning team was the leadership void. The idea of having a "big event" was very attractive to many students, but each was hesitant to take that idea and create a clear vision for the event. This hesitancy was not due to a lack of interest or capability but more a result of the students' competing priorities. Most planners were second year students with an interest in high-tech marketing. The top priority for many of those students is finding a full-time job, and that job search heats up in the early spring. Schoolwork is also a priority because many of the specialized marketing courses, which are directly applicable to full-time jobs, are available only in the spring semester. Family and friends are yet another priority. Finally, many students want the spring to be a lighter workload before they return to the pressures of the "real world". These priorities do not leave much room for other activities like the Challenge.

As a result, early planning was slow and frustrating. Students were willing to tackle individual jobs, such as planning a reception or obtaining press coverage. However, it became obvious that someone had to define a strategy for the event and manage the implementation of it if there was to be an event at all. Finally, Paul Cheng, a second-year student and member of the NPVD Steering Committee, decided to take on that role. Jennifer Houser, a first-year student and one of the authors of this thesis, agreed to help Paul manage the event. One reason Paul was able to commit the time involved to plan an event of this scale was that the NPVD faculty advisor, Nader Tavassoli, supervised the project as a thesis. Without this support, Paul would not have been able to assume the lead role.

After Paul's decision to lead the team, planning began to move more quickly but two problems continued to plague the team. The first was the organizational structure. Given that the team now had less than two months to create a large-scale event, they had to work closely together. Paul hoped that decision making could be decentralized. To promote communication, representatives from each of the 13 sub-teams[1] formed the "core" team and set up a weekly meeting. Despite scheduling a regular time for this meeting, it is difficult to get 13 people to arrive on time, stay and be productive for the entire meeting. Decentralized decision making was not feasible given the difficulties communicating the vision that was being created and refined quickly. However, these meetings were not a complete loss because they served to increase buy-in by the team. By making the decisions, the team felt ownership over the event.

A second problem for the team was a lack of planning space. The MIT Entrepreneurship Center gave Paul a desk and a computer but the rest of the team did not have anywhere to keep files, make phone calls, receive packages or hold meetings. In addition, communication between team members was not frequent and occurred mostly during chance meetings in the hallway. The productivity of the entire team suffered as a result.

Timing of event

As has already been mentioned briefly above, the 1998 event was handicapped by the late start of planning, which by default pushed the actual event date as far into the spring as possible to give the organizing team enough time to plan the Challenge. Given the amount of work required to recruit participants and sponsors, actors, and volunteers, and create the fictitious business around which the event was held, there was no choice but to delay the event as much as possible, concentrating in the first year on tactical/execution issues instead of strategic considerations like the impact of having chosen a particular date for the Sloan Challenge. Due to these pressures, the first Sloan Challenge was scheduled for Friday, May 8, 1998.

While the event was deemed an unqualified success in its first year by the participants and organizers, the choice of such a late date did pose some problems, both tactical and strategic. The event date chosen was the day after the MIT $50K Competition final awards, which caused some tactical/operational difficulties in recruiting players, Challenge actors, and volunteers from the MIT community. Many of the people potentially interested in participating in the Sloan Challenge had already committed their time to the $50K Competition. Furthermore, by holding the event the week before the end of classes, the Sloan Challenge was competing for students’ and faculty’s attention with end-of-year pressures like final papers, exams, and a shift in focus away from Sloan related activities to “the real world”.

Finally, having held the event a week before the end of classes left precious little time for the organizing team to bring the Sloan Challenge to a close for the year, which included thanking sponsors and participants, planting the seed of next year’s event in sponsor’s minds and calendars, and transitioning the event to a new student-management team for 1999.

On the strategic side, given the previously mentioned time pressures of organizing the inaugural Sloan Challenge, there was no choice but to hold the event in the late spring. An in-depth discussion of the strategic implications of the event date will follow in the discussion of the 1999 Sloan Challenge.

Strategy

As discussed above, the inaugural Challenge was conceived to better the reputation of Sloan students' soft skills. The customer at that time was loosely defined as a "high level corporate executive". One assumption that was made (intentionally or not) was that the recruiters were the same people as, or were influenced by, the players that attended the event. The original value proposition included a number of benefits for the executive:

Recruiting - meet students in a fun yet intellectually rigorous setting

Professional - network with other leading executives, promote your brand

Personal - compete against the best, win great prizes

Charity - contribute to a worthy cause

Selling to the "corporate executive" proved harder than expected. Many recruiters felt the recruiting season was over and their budgets were spent. The networking benefits were unproven since the guest list was incomplete. Similarly, the competition could not be sized up until other companies bought in. Luckily, no one disputed the benefit of helping a non-profit organization and a number of sponsors were secured[2].

As is common with most start-ups, all efforts were focused on creating the product (a fun event) and none were given to understanding if it had achieved the desired outcome afterwards (changed perceptions about Sloan). This was due in part to the late date of the event which left little time for follow-up analysis.

Succession

Given the time pressures already discussed above, and the focus in 1998 on execution of the inaugural event, there was not much time nor energy available to devote to planning the succession of the Sloan Challenge to a new management team for 1999.

The 1998 organizing team did repeatedly stress the importance of involving first-year students in organizing and executing the Challenge, who would then take over management for the following year. In practice, the core organizing team in 1998 was essentially all second-year students, which meant the opportunity to expose first-year students to the management of the event was lost. A large number of first-year students did participate, as members of the organizing teams, players, or event-day volunteers, but their exposure to the management of the Challenge was not sufficient to create interest in taking over for 1999, nor to transfer substantial management knowledge from 1998’s event. The authors of this thesis are among the few exceptions to the above. As already mentioned, Jennifer Houser worked closely with Paul Cheng in managing the event, and in doing so gained valuable experience to take over management for 1999. Felipe Payet was more peripherally involved, but was close enough to the management team to know that he wanted to take a leading role in planning and executing the event in 1999.

On the infrastructure side, a contact management and event-day database system was created by Paul Cheng and Rob Rutledge. While the event-day databases were essential in operating the Sloan Challenge, the contact management system was set up too late to be of any real use to the organizing team. Therefore, the contact management database did not contain much useful data.

1999 - A NEW CHALLENGE

The inaugural MIT Sloan Challenge was seen as a great success by the organizers, school administration and the participants. Although no success measures were defined or tracked, other factors indicated this success. The energy on event day was very positive and upbeat. At the end of the day, many participants requested invitations to future events like the Challenge. In addition, the student organizers felt that planning the Challenge had been a great way to pull together and expand on the skills they had learned at Sloan. This success encouraged the authors of this thesis to plan a second Challenge.

During the fall of 1998, Sloan received falling rankings in Business Week (#9 to #15) and US News and World Report (#3 to #5). Many students felt these rankings were not an accurate gauge of the quality of the school. This press and the resulting questions from recruiters made the pressure to enhance Sloan's image even greater.

The following sections document the changes that were made to the 1998 management strategy by the 1999 planning team.

Team

Given their involvement in the 1998 Challenge, the authors of this thesis had the experience and interest to lead the event together in 1999. However, we also knew this role would require a tremendous amount of work and time over the course of the year. After having worked with Paul Cheng the year before, Professor Nader Tavassoli had seen the potential of the learning experience provided by an activity like the Sloan Challenge. He offered to supervise one or two thesis projects for the lead organizers of the Sloan Challenge. This opportunity allowed us to commit to the project and begin planning during the 1st semester.

One of the things we wanted to change about the event was the size of the planning team. Having seen the difficulties and frustrations caused by a large team during 1998, we felt a smaller "lead" team could create the strategy for the event and manage sub-teams to implement it. In addition to being more productive, we hoped the smaller team size would create an even stronger feeling of ownership among the leads. We felt this buy-in was important because of the amount of work to be done not just in planning the event but also in laying the foundation for future Challenges. With Nader Tavassoli's support, the lead team could conduct this work as part of a thesis by incorporating and expanding of the skills we were learning at Sloan.

We began by thinking about the existing organizational structure and how we might change it to create a more cohesive strategy for the event. This structure would impact the lead team in terms of skills and responsibilities. Each of the functions performed the year before were still needed, but we thought they could be grouped together more effectively. We finally organized the planning into four main areas. One area is creative, the team that creates the game itself. Another is sales and marketing, which publicizes the event and sells the game to players and sponsors. The technology team provides the communications infrastructure before and during the event. Finally, the project management team pulls together the other teams by managing the master schedule and budget and other "corporate" functions. Given our areas of interest, we would lead the project management and technology teams and would recruit others for the remaining roles of creative and marketing leads.[3]

Next, we thought about how to build the team. One of our key criterion was to find people we enjoy personally since we would be spending a lot of time together and wanted to have fun doing so. Another was that we would all share the goal of bettering Sloan's image. Obviously, anyone who had applicable experience, either planning the Challenge or from previous work, would be an asset to the team. It was also important that we could all trust each other to carry out our responsibilities and support each other.

The lead for creative was an easy choice. We are friends with Vinay Bhargava, who had been an important part of the 1998 creative team. Vinay was also involved in other extracurricular activities at Sloan so we felt comfortable that he shared similar goals. This involvement was an initial source of concern though, because we questioned the time Vinay would have for another activity. Vinay had the same concerns but after a few conversations, he assured us his involvement in the other activities would be winding down or would not impact his commitment to the Challenge.

The lead for marketing was more difficult to find. One of our close friends had contributed greatly to the Challenge's sponsorship drive the year before. However, he had a number professional, academic and social responsibilities which made it impossible for him to commit the time and attention necessary. Another friend, Sherry Smoot, was very interested but had not participated in planning the Challenge the year before. At first, it required an effort on everyone's part to bring Sherry up to speed. However, Sherry provided an objective viewpoint on the goals and management practices of the event. This proved extremely beneficial as we worked to strengthen the positioning and strategy of the event.

Once we had recruited the lead organizing team, we set up a regular weekly meeting time that was convenient for all of our schedules. We began by talking about our goals, which included a discussion of personal goals as well as those for the event.[4] This discussion was meant to determine our expectations as well as how we would work together throughout the year. Then we defined our mission statement and elevator speech[5]. It was important to write this document as a group because it prompted many questions about the purpose of the event. At the end of that discussion, we had pulled together our ideas and created a common language to describe the Challenge.

Another thing about the event that we wanted to change was to provide a working space for the team. Having a common working area does a number of things. First, it makes a lot of logistical issues easier. Having a desk, phone, fax, and address makes our jobs easier and makes us look a lot more professional at the same time. It is very difficult to recruit sponsors if you are constantly playing phone tag because you are unreachable at school. It is also very hard to plan and document an event if you do not have things as simple as a file cabinet that is accessible to everyone. This space also has to be centrally located if it is going to be used by all the members of our team.

One space that fit all of our criteria was the Entrepreneurship Center, located on the 3rd floor of the Tang Building. It is easily accessible to all Sloan students and is already has an active office environment. Ken Morse, the director of the E-Center, supports many student activities and wanted to give us a cubicle for our headquarters. However, the Entrepreneurship Center only "owns" half of the cubes and they were already full. Given the space constraints, Ken was only able to offer us use of the phone, fax and copier. The other half of the cubes are assigned to the Sloan Master's Office. Fortunately, the Master's Office had supported the 1998 Challenge and was pleased with its success. Larry Abeln, the Director of the Master's Program, understood our needs and gave us permission to use one of the cubes for the school year.

Timing of event

In setting the event date for the 1999 Sloan Challenge, one of our key concerns was to schedule the event early enough in the Spring to allow for proper follow-up after the Challenge, and to ease the transition process to a new first-year management team in the weeks following the event. This had to be balanced with the need to leave sufficient time in the Spring Semester for planning, and recruitment of sponsors and participants, which we planned to begin immediately following the winter break.

To this end, the 1999 Sloan Challenge was initially set to be held on April 9, 1999. Our rationale for choosing this date was that it would provide sufficient time to organize the event after the winter break and occur late enough into the Spring so that weather would not be a significant concern (a key issue since the event in its present for requires travel throughout Boston). In addition, we did not want to schedule the Sloan Challenge in conflict with other MIT-Sloan activities, such as the $50K competition or school breaks. Finally, a date of April 9 would provide us with ample time after the event for proper follow-up with participants and transition to a new team.

Unfortunately, due to conflicts with other Sloan events (Sloan Diversity Day), location constraints on-campus, and lack of availability of key participants, we were forced to re-schedule the event to Friday, April 30. While this date was one week earlier in the semester than the event was held in 1998, in the end, we find ourselves this year with a time crunch not unlike that experienced in 1998, where event wrap-up and transition to a new team had to be accomplished in a very short time-span.

Taking a step back from the logistical and operational issues affecting timing, however, a significant amount of our time as lead organizers was spent in the planning stages for this year’s Sloan Challenge discussing more strategic timing concerns: Is late Spring the right time to hold the Sloan Challenge? Should we move it to the beginning of the Spring semester, or perhaps even to the Fall? The answer to these questions is not an easy one to establish, since it requires consideration not just of simple logistics, but also of the customer needs of all the stakeholders in the Challenge. For that matter, answering the timing question hinges on a clear definition of who those key stakeholders are, and which are the most important of the customer needs we can address. Essentially, the timing question is inextricably linked to the definition of the Sloan Challenge customer.

This section will summarize our discussions regarding different strategic timing choices for the event, without attempting to arrive at a categorical recommendation, since that recommendation depends so much on the discussion of the Sloan Challenge’s customers elsewhere in this document.

As mentioned previously in the review of the 1998 event, the timing of the Sloan Challenge was not considered from a strategic point of view in 1998. In planning the Sloan Challenge for 1999, the organizing team engaged in multiple discussions regarding the ideal time to host the Sloan Challenge, not with an eye towards changing the event this year, but rather looking forward to the Sloan Challenge in the future. As already mentioned in the preceding paragraph, our discussions always returned to one of the central strategic questions we continue to wrestle with: Who are our principal target customers, and what is it they are looking for in an event like the Sloan Challenge? An even more complex issue arises when we begin to examine the potential implications of changing the timing of the Sloan Challenge: By moving the event date, do we de-facto redefine the Challenge, and therefore also change our target customer?

Students and the MIT Community

Students and the MIT-Sloan community are the key beneficiaries of the Sloan Challenge’s mission to improve the perception of MIT-Sloan and its students in the outside world. For members of the MIT community, holding the Sloan Challenge in late Spring probably conflicts the least with other scheduling pressures. By the Spring semester, the organized Sloan recruiting season has ended, and job-hunting pressure begins to decline for many students. In addition, first year students are much more likely to get involved in an extracurricular organization like the Sloan Challenge once they are finished with the first-semester core curriculum.

On the other hand, since the Sloan Challenge provides students the chance to interact with corporate executives, the students might view the event as a job-hunt related networking opportunity. If this is truly important to our student customers, it would argue for moving the Sloan Challenge to the fall semester, since late Spring is too late for the event to be useful as a recruiting tool.

Looking now at the Challenge’s internal customers, the student organizing team, we can also argue for the event to be held in the Fall or in the Spring. The Spring semester is more attractive for the organizers due to the decreased job-related and academic pressures already mentioned above.

However, a significant disadvantage to hosting the event in the Spring is the fact that precious little time is left to hand over management of the organization to a first-year team after the event is held. For this same reason, most Sloan extracurricular organizations hand-over leadership to a first-year team early in the Spring term, which allows the new team to “get their hands dirty” while the second-year students are still on campus and are easily available to assist the new managers.

Furthermore, holding the event in late Spring forces the second-year organizing team to remain fully committed and with a very heavy workload well beyond the time when most second-year students have begun to phase out their extracurricular organization-related responsibilities.

Corporate Sponsors/Participants

From a convenience point-of-view, the Sloan Challenge’s corporate sponsors and players may not have a strong preference for the time of year the event is held. A more important question, however, is whether the Sloan Challenge held at a different time would be more attractive to potential sponsors from a strategic point of view.

Holding the Challenge in the late Spring, after the end of Sloan’s organized recruiting season, presents the event to corporate sponsors and participants as a networking opportunity without direct and immediate impact on their company’s recruiting efforts at Sloan. Moving the event into the Fall or early Spring recruiting season would provide us the opportunity to market the Sloan Challenge as a more immediate recruiting opportunity for potential corporate sponsors and participants.

This move to the recruiting season would not come without possible negative side effects, however. First of all, by hosting the event during the active recruiting season, we would perhaps be changing the potential customer base for the Sloan Challenge, away from the largely varied combination of large and small, established and startup companies we attracted this year. During the Fall or early Spring, we would more easily attract companies with an already established recruiting budget and presence at Sloan, at the expense of those companies too small to recruit aggressively. In essence, it would be to easy to end up “preaching to the choir”, marketing the event to a customer base which already has a high opinion of the Sloan School, instead of to companies who aren’t coming to Sloan to recruit and need to be convinced to do so.

Another timing-related issue is the coordination with and separation from other Sloan extracurricular events. In 1998, the Sloan Challenge was held the day after the Final Awards Ceremony for the MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition. This resulted in a resource “crunch” where many people who would have been interested in participating or volunteering to work both events could not do so due to overlapping schedules and responsibilities. Furthermore, hosting two high-profile events in such close proximity would potentially dilute the media coverage and community recognition afforded to both events.

One sponsor of both the MIT $50K Competition and the Sloan Challenge did suggest that it would be easier for sponsoring companies to consolidate events into a one week “Entrepreneurship week”, in order to facilitate travel and logistical support by the sponsor. Even though this request is valid, we believe the tradeoffs, as mentioned in the preceding paragraph, outweigh the convenience benefits to potential sponsors of multiple events.

Strategy

As previously noted, the 1999 school rankings reinforced the need to improve Sloan's reputation. Again, we targeted "high level corporate executives" as our customers. Then we applied the customer analysis framework we were learning in Barbara Bund's Entrepreneurial Marketing course. This framework builds a strategy by first identifying the customer needs. We know executives are interested in hiring MBAs, have busy schedules, are difficult to reach, and pride themselves on their business skills and intuition. We also knew that their companies regularly made donations to respected non-profit organizations. But there were many things we did not know so we turned to our "insiders", the recent Challenge alumni now working at companies like the ones we wanted to target. We found that some needs varied by type of company. For example, larger companies that regularly hire MBAs seemed to consider any business school activity as part of their recruiting budget which is controlled by the corporate recruiter. However, executives at smaller companies have more freedom to expense the event as they see fit. Other needs were consistent across companies. Many executives needed to work on team building - either among new employees (as in a start-up) or with a new hire (as in a group that has hired an MBA). All executives cared about networking and were influenced by other's opinions of the event.

The next step in the framework is to build a strategy based on those needs. We decided the product would remain the same - a fun game that focuses on business skills and teamwork. To start the networking effect, we would have to "prime the pump" with influential insiders. By signing on a number of MIT "big wigs" and a well-known keynote speaker, the event would become far more interesting to corporate "big wigs". We would offer a number of pricing options to attract a range of companies[6]. Some companies with bigger budgets would be interested in receiving more recognition to build their brand at the school while others would be more interested in simply attending. We would contact our corporate insiders first and rely on their advice and ability to sell the event internally. These conversations would take place as early as possible to ensure ample time to gain approval and reserve time on the busy executives' calendars. For companies that had already hired a student, we would offer to invite the student to join the executives to take advantage of the team-building opportunity. We chose City Year as our beneficiary because they are a national organization with a similar focus on community, leadership and teamwork.

Two strategic questions arose during this planning that we did not have enough information to answer. The first was the question of the timing of the event - the time of year, day of the week and amount of lead time required to recruit sponsors. The second was the question of success measures. How would we gauge if we were attaining our goals? We identified the following factors:

Experiential - did the players have a good time?

Influential - did the event better the players' opinions of the school?

Financial - how much money was raised, what were the associated costs?

In a discussion about our customers and their needs, Professor Barbara Bund suggested we may be overlooking a key group. She pointed out that press coverage may be critical to achieving our goals if it plays a role in shaping people's opinions. If it was, we should provide the Sloan PR office with materials in a format they can use and spend more time recruiting press coverage. This made us realize that we did not know what contributed to an executive's opinion of an MBA program. We could think of things that might shape an opinion that an event like the Challenge could not change. We designed a simple survey to gather some of this information from the players[7].

Succession

In organizing and executing the Sloan Challenge for 1999, we set as one of our primary goals to try to further institutionalize the event, in order to solidify its position as a regular occurrence and a trademark of the MIT-Sloan School. While the successful execution of a second Sloan Challenge goes a long way towards establishing it as an annual event, there is still a lot of work to be done to solidify that position.

The most important issue related to succession is the transfer of management of the Sloan Challenge from the outgoing lead organizing team. Between 1998 and 1999, we were lucky in that the authors of this thesis were close to that year’s organizing team, and Jennifer Houser had taken a significant role as a first year in leading the 1998 Sloan Challenge. Our relationship with last year’s team, and Jennifer’s experience managing the event in 1998 gave us an advantage in beginning to plan the 1999 Sloan Challenge.

Given the experience of succession between 1998 and 1999, the lead organizers for 1999 decided early on to recruit first-year "buddies", who would be exposed to the various stages of planning the Sloan Challenge. The goal was that the first-year "buddies" would eventually become the management team for the Sloan Challenge 2000. Unfortunately, we were not able to accomplish this goal, as most first-years were reluctant to commit at such an early stage to an event they knew little about.

As a result, there has not been a first-year student involved at the lead-organizer level in planning the event, which could be a concern come next year. However, the lead organizers took decisive steps this year to include first-year students as much as possible in their respective teams, and these first-year students were sufficiently involved to both transfer knowledge and create interest in leading the event in 2000. As an example, on the Technology side, there were 4 first-year students who took significant responsibility, and one of those has already expressed serious interest in leading the technology team for the Sloan Challenge in 2000. The other lead organizers likewise worked extensively with first-year students, so while there may still be challenges for the first-year students who take over the Sloan Challenge in 2000, we feel confident that the team managing the event will have gained adequate experience through their involvement in 1999.

Another issue is the choice of lead organizers for the Sloan Challenge 2000. Should we, the lead-organizers in 1999, pick the management team for the following year? Or should interested first-year students decide amongst themselves who will fill each management position (or for that matter, what those positions will be)? This decision is particularly critical for the overall lead-organizer, who will have to coordinate the efforts of the other teams. The person taking on that role ideally have had significant exposure to the previous year’s Challenge, as well as an extremely high level of commitment, to be taking on a project of that magnitude.

Another initiative we undertook during this year’s Sloan Challenge was to leverage technology, in an effort to capture as much information as possible regarding the planning and operation of the event.

While in the early planning stages, a plan was conceived to acquire (either permanently or on loan from a sponsor or from MIT) server hardware and software to run Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0, Exchange Server, and Access. This would have allowed us to implement calendar sharing, meeting planning and scheduling, and centralized document storage and retrieval, as well as a new platform on which to run the contact and event-day databases. These capabilities would not only have made the planning of the event run more smoothly, they would have also allowed us to keep an organized central record of all communications, and documents created and distributed. Furthermore, since all Sloan students already use the Microsoft Office suite of applications, the client software necessary to take advantage of the above system would already have been in the hands of all users, facilitating adoption of the system.

Unfortunately, we were unable to secure the necessary hardware from a sponsor or from the University early on. This resulted in our falling back to the system used last year for event operations: Filemaker Pro 4.0 databases hosted (graciously) by the Entrepreneurship Center on a Power Macintosh Server. While Filemaker is a powerful piece of software with an intuitive user interface, and we were able to build on the comprehensive databases which had been built by last year’s organizing team, there was one significant drawback: None of the members of the organizing team had the client software required to access and modify Filemaker databases, nor had they worked with the program in the past. This resulted in a very low rate of adoption of our database system for contact management and prospect tracking.

Notwithstanding the problems of using Filemaker, we persevered in attempting to create a useful contact management system for prospect and sponsor tracking, in the hopes of both making this year’s process more efficient, and also of creating a useful historical record of contacts and communications with them for next year’s organizing team. The system we designed, and refined throughout the semester, consists of a contact database relationally linked to a company database, allowing multiple individual contacts to be associated with each company. In addition, the system allows multiple classifications of contact type, and this information will be stored in a history field so that in subsequent years, the organizers can easily see what the historical relationship has been between the Sloan Challenge and each sponsor, player, or supplier contact. Hopefully this system will contribute to the institutionalization of the Sloan Challenge, and will ease the process of succession from one year to the next.[8]

No matter how much work was put into the design and fine tuning of the database system, that system will be useless unless it is populated with accurate and complete data. We continue to face the problem of poor adoption of Filemaker as a database platform, and perhaps should seriously consider migrating the contact management databases to a more widely adopted standard like Microsoft Access.

ANALYSIS & RECOMMENDATIONS

Team

The following points review our organizational structure and, based on our experience, make recommendations for improvement:

• The choice of people to lead the Challenge worked out well. We enjoyed working together and felt we achieved our goals[9]. We strongly recommend that careful consideration go in to choosing the team and defining the desired outcome of that relationship. It is also important to review those goals periodically, as they tend to change over time.

• The small size of the group made it easy to meet and make decisions. Responsibilities were clearly divided among leads. Each lead felt ownership over their area and made the decisions relevant to their group. At the same time, each lead felt they contributed to shaping the overall event. We recommend that the lead group remain as small as possible. Obviously, the organization and number of leads depends to a certain degree on the specific skills of each year's organizing team.

• The idea that we would create the strategy and lead others to implement it did not prove to be a valid one. Because of the competing priorities discussed before, it was difficult to find other volunteers to take on any of the larger jobs. This situation made us question whether our group was too small. In particular, sales and marketing proved to be too large a responsibility to group together. It was too much work for one person to take on as well as too much pressure. We recommend these functions be separated in the future.

• We found that many students reacted strongly against "taking a lead on [a specific job]". We thought that phrase would help install a sense of ownership but it really just scared people away. After seeing this effect repeatedly, we consciously stopped using those words. Students were willing to help with smaller jobs but did not want to take responsibility for planning part of the event. Most people were worried about the commitment and felt their coursework would suffer. One solution we discussed was the possibility of getting academic credit for specific jobs. For example, doing a customer analysis and defining a pricing strategy for the event as part of a marketing class or as a for-credit project. However, we have mixed opinions on this idea. On one hand, we felt that this work provided real-world examples to test the theories we learn in the classroom. We realize that there are pros and cons to having more than one advisor associated with our organization. On the other hand, we felt that getting credit for volunteer work went against the Sloan tradition of extracurricular activities and volunteer work. We also felt that it might cause resentment among other student organizers, such as the senate or club leaders, that spend large amounts of time organizing other events. However, we all agree that writing a thesis in conjunction with planning did increase our buy-in and add academic rigor to planning the Challenge.

• The choice of office space worked out very well. The E-center environment is very friendly, especially to groups of active people. Other residents of the E-Center became our extended organization, receiving packages and answering questions. We also had the opportunity to meet many people who were visiting the E-Center or participating in one of its many activities. For example, John Rehm from FidelityCAPITAL visits the E-Center frequently. After meeting the organizers of the Challenge, John provided an additional discount on the car service for the event. We recommend the E-Center as a good home for a head quarters for the Sloan Challenge.

• The planning process was greatly aided by having a central meeting place. Communication increased as it was unusual for the leads not to be in our cube for at least part of each day.

• Having a place to hang our pictures and draw on the whiteboard helped build excitement and bring our team together by making the Challenge "real" before event day. We strongly recommend that a permanent meeting space is secured. The psychological benefits will grow over time as more pictures and mementos of past Challenges are collected. In addition, other more practical benefits will be realized such as reduced set-up time at the beginning of each year and reduced costs on bigger orders of letterhead, enabled by having the same mailing address and phone number each year.

Timing of event

As shown in the Player Survey Results in the Appendix to this document, most of the customers of the 1999 Sloan Challenge were pleased with the timing of the event, both in terms of the day of the week and time of year. However, this does not automatically validate our choice of date and time as the best option, (partly due to potential self-selection issues in our survey: The customers who participated in the Challenge and answered the survey are by most likely the ones who were happy with the date and time to begin with).

The more difficult question, as already discussed in the Timing section of the 1999 Sloan Challenge Review, is the strategic one: Should we change the time of year during which the Challenge is held, to better address our target customers’ needs?

Students’ recruiting needs might be better served by a Sloan Challenge in the Fall. However, first-year students would not be able to participate as extensively, due to the demands of the first semester core curriculum.

Some companies might be more interested in participating in a Fall Sloan Challenge as an opportunity to meet, network and work with potential hires. However, by moving the event to the fall, we might end up marketing the event to and recruiting participants from a pool of companies that already recruit at Sloan, and don’t need to be convinced to change their image of the MIT-Sloan program.

□ Holding the event earlier in the Fall, or much earlier in the Spring, would allow for a less hurried and more complete changeover in management to a team of first year students. However, as mentioned above, first year students would probably find it difficult to get involved in planning the event due to the academic demands of their first semester at Sloan. Furthermore, holding the event in the early Spring would force us to actively market the Sloan Challenge and recruit participants during the winter break and holiday season. This would pose problems both on the sponsor side, since we would be contacting them during a busy time of year, and on the students’ side, since most students either leave campus or are involved in IAP activities during the break.

In summary, there are strong arguments both for keeping the event in its current time in mid-late Spring, as well as for moving it to the early Spring or Fall. It is difficult to make a recommendation given the trade-offs involved, but perhaps as the event matures and acquires a more clear identity, the timing decision will be an easier one to make.

As a side note, the problems we had scheduling the Sloan Challenge (discussed earlier in this document), and the conflicts we ran into along the way, highlight the dire need at Sloan for a central calendar of academic, extracurricular, and social activities. Such a calendar, managed either by students or by the administration, would have eliminated, or at least lessened the scheduling conflicts we ran into in planning the Sloan Challenge.

Strategy

The following points review our customer strategy and, based on our experience, make recommendations for improvement:

• One part of our strategy that worked well was selling to recent Challenge alumni. They enjoyed the event and were able to sell it effectively internally. However, many of these insiders are not executives yet. We found that most teams resulting from these sales did not include executives. However, it is important to keep in mind that this is an ongoing relationship. Each year those insiders move up the ranks. Soon we will have the high-level contacts we desire. We recommend that the Challenge alumni (both players and planners) are carefully tracked and contacted each year. These alumni are also an invaluable source of information as mentors.

• Our strategy to "prime the pump" broke down because we were unable to interest influential MIT insiders. We made a list of the MIT faculty we would like to have involved and invited them one at a time to be a member of the MIT Dream Team. We found that we had started a too late because many of the well known faculty calendars are set more than 6 months ahead. As we waited for their responses, we lost even more time. In a perfect world, we would identify the date of the event and send out these invitations a year ahead. However, the new organizing team must be in place and decide on their own strategy before this can happen. Therefore, "priming the pump" with MIT insiders may not be possible.

• The team-building sale was very influential with some of our customers. In addition, many players cited the team aspect as the most enjoyable part of the event[10]. It is possible to use this approach to sell the event in the future. The organizing team could contact their classmates who have accepted jobs and ask them to recruit their new co-workers as players. While that might result in easier sales, it may not result in the appropriate audience. After all, those companies have hired a Sloan graduate so they presumably have a favorable impression of the school.

• The choice of City Year helped us sell the event. Many companies were familiar with City Year's goals and were willing to make a donation to the organization. However, we realized that our contribution would have less of an impact at an established organization like City Year because it already received large amounts of corporate and federal funding. For the next few years, we would recommend going with a well-known non-profit to make the selling of the event as easy as possible. After the Challenge has an established a track record and network of sponsors, other lesser-known organizations may benefit more from our contribution.

• We decided early on not to work too closely with the non-profit organization. In 1998, Paul had hoped that Jobs For Youth would help us find corporate sponsors. This decision cost him a lot of time and did not result in any sponsorships. In 1999, we defined our relationship with City Year simply as a beneficiary. We feel this relationship required minimum effort for both parties and we would recommend using the same structure in the future.

• One incident occurred which made us realize the importance of our internal stakeholders. We called the Dean to confirm his agenda as a member of the MIT Dream Team. Up until this point, we had been making arrangements directly with the Dean. This time, he was unavailable so we spoke to his secretary. She was upset because she did not know anything about the Challenge and had counted on using that time to schedule a meeting requested by MIT's President, Chuck Vest. We quickly brought her up to speed and fortunately she helped us keep the Dean's schedule clear for the afternoon. We strongly recommend that VIPs assistants be brought into the loop early on and are kept up to date as planning progresses.

• Another communication vehicle we found to be very successful was sending a regular "update" to our internal stakeholders. It was a short email every one or two weeks that highlighted recent developments regarding the Challenge - the date, who would be attending and amount of money raised. It went out to our Sloan mentors (Larry Abeln, Paul Denning, Ilse Evans, Ken Morse, Dick Schmalensee). This email helped them track the growth of the event and maintained mindshare over the course of planning the event. We would highly recommend that this tradition continue.

• We were worried that players might find the survey annoying or inappropriate. The comments and experience of the people collecting them suggest that was not the case. If a future planning team has specific, actionable questions we would recommend using a short survey on event day. Note that this will only provide feedback from current customers. We should also find a way to collect information from the people who chose not to be our customers. This might include a series of quick questions that are asked over the phone when a sponsor declines.

Succession

Following this year’s Sloan Challenge, the question of succession is among the most pressing in the organizer’s minds. Given the short amount of time left in the year, and the fact that all of the lead organizers are second-year students in the MBA program, it is critical to identify first-year students with the excitement about the Sloan Challenge and commitment to excellence required to execute the event in the year 2000.

The key remaining question on the subject of succession, as discussed earlier, is what the outgoing management team’s role should be (if any) in choosing the team for the next year. Ideally, there will be a clear and obvious choice of lead organizers for the following year, given the level of commitment and involvement shown by the interested first-year students during the current Challenge. However, as has happened this year and also occurred in 1998, there are some interested candidates, but no clear choices for all management positions. We hope that by continuing to discuss succession with frst-year organizers, through informal discussions and an official meeting to be held the week of May 10, the potential lead organizers for next year’s Challenge might express their interest more clearly.

There is no need for the whole organizing team to be in place immediately, but there should be at least one or two of the lead positions established, and ideally the general manager (Jennifer Houser’s role in 1999), who will then lead the recruiting efforts early in the Fall to complete the management team.

In addition, those students interested in taking over management of the Sloan Challenge will have a chance to receive a “data dump” from the current organizing team before we all leave Sloan, so it is in the event’s best interest to establish succession as clearly as possible now.

Looking back to the planning of this year’s event, we must ask if there is anything we could have done differently to ease the succession process into next year. We (the management team), engaged first-year students in the planning of the event as much as possible, but perhaps could have started discussions with them about succession earlier in the process, so interested first-years could have more explicitly taken on a learning role as part of their involvement this year, in preparation for taking over management for 2000.

APPENDIX: 1998 Organizational Chart

APPENDIX: 1998 Sponsor List

|Corporate Sponsors (Cash and In-kind) | | |

|Benefactor |Patron |Sponsor |

|$10-25K |$5-10K |Up to $5K |

|Nokia Mobile Telephones |Andersen Consulting |Brew Moon Restaurant |

|Polaroid Corporation |Bell Atlantic |Calpco |

| |Dell Computer Corporation |Deloitte & Touche |

| |Hanify & King, Attorneys-at-law |The Design Continuum |

| |Massachusetts Financial Services |Foley, Hoag & Eliot |

| |MIT Entrepreneurship Center |Goldman, Sachs & Co. |

| |Omnipoint, Inc. |Imagen Incorporated |

| |Reflective Technologies |KPMG Peat Marwick |

| |Teradyne, Inc. |Legal Sea Foods |

| | |Mellon Trust |

| | |NeoGenesis, Inc. |

| | |Pepsi-Cola New England |

| | |Price Waterhouse EMC |

| | |The Sail Loft |

| | |Sessa, Glick & Quiroga |

| | |SmithOBrien |

| | |The Weber Group |

|Individual Sponsors | |

|Patron |Contributor |

|$500 and above |$100-$500 |

|Aspen Technologies |William Clurman |

|A.T. Kearney |David Diamond |

|David Melville, The Bowdoin Group |Alicia Knoff |

|Marakon Associates |SP Kothari |

| |Matthew Prete |

| |Don Rosenfield |

| |Duncan Simester |

| |Brian Smith |

| |Nader Tavasolli |

APPENDIX: 1999 Organizational Chart

The number of people (in addition to lead organizer) required for each task is indicated in parenthesis. Note that these numbers increase during the last few weeks of leading up to the event.

APPENDIX: 1999 Sponsor Categories

Gold ($15,000+)

• Send a team of 3 people to compete under your company name (with 1 MBA student/faculty)

• Recognition as Gold corporate sponsor in the Event Program

• Right to invite 15 guests (in addition to the 3 contestants) to attend the Event Reception/Awards Ceremony

• Use of Company logo in Event Program and other collateral

• Company logo and name on official MIT Sloan Challenge T-shirt

• Company logo, name, and web site link on home page of MIT Sloan Challenge web site

• Recognition in official press releases and communication

• Banner displaying Company name at Registration and Event Reception/Awards Ceremony

Silver ($5,000)

• Send a team of 3 people to compete under your company name (with 1 MBA student/faculty)

• Recognition as Silver corporate sponsor in the Event Program

• Right to invite 10 guests (in addition to the 3 contestants) to attend the Event Reception/Awards Ceremony

• Use of Company logo in Event Program and other collateral

• Company logo and name on official MIT Sloan Challenge T-shirt

• Company logo, name, and web site link on sponsors page of MIT Sloan Challenge web site

Bronze ($2,000)

• Send a team of 3 people to compete under your company name (with 1 MBA student/faculty)

• Recognition as Bronze corporate sponsor in the Event Program

• Right to invite 5 guests (in addition to the 3 contestants) to attend the Event Reception/Awards Ceremony

Sloan Friend ($500)

• Individual entry on team

• Recognition as Sloan Friend Contributor in the Event Program

• Right to invite 1 guest to attend the Event Reception/Awards Ceremony

APPENDIX: 10/6/98 Meeting Minutes

Goals

• fun

• realistic

• thesis credit

• learn

• network

• image improvement

• continuity

Logistics

• Meetings: set time, 2 hours per week initially. Thursday, 10/15, 4-6 pm, after that Tuesdays, 4-6 pm, starting 10/20. Agenda driven.

Ground Rules

• Periodic review of our goals, team expectations & status.

• Agree to disagree. “Disagree & Commit”.

• Openness, flexibility, but stick to it, & DO IT IF YOU COMMITED TO IT.

• Keep surprises to a minimum.

• Secrets/Discretion.

Thesis Credit Discussion

• Jenn & Felipe are planning on doing a thesis

• Vinay & Sherry are considering it.

Key decisions to be made:

• Positioning: Will the event be the same?

• Charity

• Pricing

• Date

• Schedules

• Documentation

Review of history from last year.

APPENDIX: 1999 Mission Statement

Tag line:

A hi-tech business game.

Mission statement:

Strengthen Sloan's relationship with the business and local communities.

Elevator speech:

The MIT Sloan Challenge is a fun, mobile, high-tech game where teams of players tackle a series of challenging real-world business situations.

The MIT Sloan Challenge pits elite teams of people against one another in a battle of wits, ingenuity, and creativity that tests essential business skills such as teambuilding, networking, negotiating, marketing, and selling. Competing in the contest will be some of the smartest and most successful business leaders, professors, and MBA students in the world. Equipped with the latest mobile technologies, participants leave the comforts of the office to face a series of business challenges that unfold throughout the day around the city of Boston.

It usually takes a combination of business acumen, creativity, and enthusiasm to complete the course. Only teams that can work together and remain mission-oriented have any hope of reaching the finish line. The winning team is the one that rises highest to the challenge. When all is said and done, the MIT Sloan Challenge benefits City Year (Boston) - a non-profit organization that unites young adults for a demanding year of full-time community service, leadership development, and civic engagement.

APPENDIX: 1999 Player Survey Results

Note: 46 (out of 76) players returned the survey.

Thank you very much for participating in the Sloan Challenge today. In order to make this event the best that it can be, we ask you to take a few minutes to answer the following questions.

1. Did you have fun? 98% Yes 0% No 2% Not sure

2. Would you be willing to play again? 93% Yes 0% No 7% Not sure

3. What did you like best about today’s experience?

|43% people/team, 9% actors/scenarios, 7% variety/challenges, 7% fun/laughter, |

|5% intensity/pace, 6% challenge/competition, 6% gadgets, 4% learning, 4% reality, 4% food, |

|2% everything, 2% car, 2% gifts |

4. What did you like least?

|23% car, 20% nothing, 9% lack of clear objectives, 9% rushing, 9% lack of info, 7% phone, |

|5% coordination, 2% own inadequacies, 2% delays, 2% didn't get final scores for everyone, |

|2% questionnaire, 2% lack of communication, 2% tiring, 2% ops case, 2% hungry |

5. What time of year would be most convenient for you to participate in this event?

8% Fall 3% Winter 73% Spring 8% Summer 8% NA

6. What day of the week would be best?

2% Mon 2% Tues 6% Wed 0% Thurs 75% Fri 6% Sat 0% Sun 8% NA

7. How many months advance should we contact you?

8% One 31% Two 35% Three 14% Four 4% Five 2% Six 0% More 6% NA

8. What contributes to your perception of a school? Please indicate a percentage for each factor.

|Direct interaction with alumni/students |37.4 % |

|Faculty reputations |22.6 % |

|Press coverage |18.6 % |

|Recruiting experience |15.0 % |

|Other |6.4 % |

9. How did your opinion of MIT Sloan change from participating this event?

64% Better/improved 0% Worse/declined 32% No change 4% NA

APPENDIX: Contact Management Database

APPENDIX: Company Database

APPENDIX: Event-Day Team Database

-----------------------

[1] See the 1998 Organizational Chart in Appendix.

[2] See the 1998 Sponsor List in the Appendix.

[3] See the 1999 Organizational Chart in the Appendix.

[4] For our list of goals, see the 10/6/98 Meeting Minutes in the Appendix.

[5] See our Mission Statement in the Appendix.

[6] See the 1999 Sponsor Categories in the Appendix.

[7] See the 1999 Player Survey Results in the Appendix.

[8] See the 1999 Contact Management Database printouts in the Appendix.

[9] For our list of goals, see the 10/6/98 Meeting Minutes in the Appendix.

[10] See 1999 Player Survey Results in the Appendix.

-----------------------

Project Management

Paul Cheng, Jenn Houser

Manage overall aspects of the event

Non-Profit

Finance

Jim Murphy

Creative

Frank Days, Edie Cheng

Define “challenges”

Technology

Felipe Payet

Documentation

Schedule

Manage Team

Gadgets (2)

Sponsor Database (2)

Registration Database (2)

Challenge Database (2)

Command Center Mgmt (2)

Help Line (10)

Registration

Treavor Thomas

Manage application, registration

Hospitality

Pete Skillings

Manage participant activities

Public Relations

Perry Solomon

Promote Event

Local Sponsors

Scott Murphy

Secure local sponsors & in-kind services

Strategic Sponsors

Anabella Perozek

Secure corporate participants & in-kind services

Technical Development

Manage technical infrastructure

Command Central

Manage “Command Central”

Individual Enrollment

Lou Barrows

Secure individual participants

Marketing

Ellen Minosh

Develop & own strategic image

Design

Develop look & feel

Legal

Sales & Marketing

Sherry Smoot

Documentation

Schedule

Manage Team

Position, Look, Feel

Materials

Web Site

External PR(3)

Internal PR (1)

Design (2)

Sponsors/Sales (5)

Logistics (1)

Registration (2)

Party (1)

Speakers

Awards (1)

Project Management

Jenn Houser

Documentation

Master Schedule

Manage Team

Staffing (1)

Space & Logistics

Finance (1)

Legal

Non-Profit (1)

Creative

Vinay Bhargava

Rob Rowello

Documentation

Schedule

Manage Team

Train Actors

Storyline, Challenges (7) Hints

Scoring

Creative Documents (7)

Actors (25)

Manage Actors

Storyline at Kickoff

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