Tertunda ke Singapura

Akhirnya result dari NUS University datang juga. Sebagaimana yang saya ceritakan dalam postingan saya sebelumnya, Menjajal ”Community Marketing”, saya dan beberapa teman-teman kuliah mencoba mengikuti Kompetisi Business Plan yang diselenggarakan oleh NUS University Singapore menyambut ulang tahunnya. Setelah menyerahkan Executive Summary tanggal 9 Desember kemarin, maka yang dapat kami lakukan kemudian hanyalah menunggu dan berdoa, sembari berharap kami bisa mendapatkan kesempatan untuk melaju ke babak selanjutnya.

Hanya saja, hasil akhir memang masih belum berpihak kepada kami. Kami tidak lolos ke babak selanjutnya. Berarti, impian kami untuk maju ke Singapura pun akhirnya harus tertunda. Yup, tertunda dan bukan gagal. Berikut petikan email dari NUS University.

Dear Team

Thank you, once again, for participating in Cerebration 2008. This year, the competition saw participation from close to 1,700 students from Business Schools in 6 continents. The Executive Summaries submitted have been judged by a panel of 25 professors from different faculties. The identities of the participating schools were concealed to ensure an unbiased judging process. The entries were of extremely high quality and only the top 54 entries (Top 18 for each Case Study) have been selected to move on to Round 2.

Unfortunately, your team has not been selected for Round 2.
We appreciate your participation and hope to work with your school on other events in the future.

As feedback, here are some of the comments the judges had on some of the executive summaries (This is not specific to the entry submitted by your team):

"Too many teams tend to write a "generic" report, which could be applicable to any firm. E.g., these are the ones where the crux of the argument is "expand into country X because the economy is booming". Such reports don't say why the ideas are a good thing for the focal firm specifically, and so add little value."

"Surprisingly, many teams had submissions that were poorly formatted, with more than a few spelling errors, etc. This is a consultant report, and a competitive event at that – such mistakes must be avoided at all costs! "

"Many reports give facts, facts, and more facts. The research effort is appreciated, but so what? The reader needs to see the team's conclusions, supported by a summary of the analysis. Facts, if they are really needed, belong in the appendices."


Best Regards,

Team Cerebration