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Deadline Looms For NextBillion Case Competition

Friday, October 3, 2014

The deadline for entry forms for the 2015 NextBillion Case Writing Competition is Oct. 10. The deadline to submit a case study is Dec. 19.

Get all the important information here, including contest forms, important dates, and helpful resources. The competition is sponsored by the Citi Foundation and administered by GlobaLens, WDI’s publishing division. WDI is the parent organization of NextBillion.

The 2015 NextBillion Case Writing Competition recognizes and publishes the best-written case studies about business strategies aimed at alleviating poverty – especially at the base of the pyramid (BoP). Last year’s competition attracted 52 entries representing 34 universities and 15 countries.

The winning case authors receive $3,500. The second-place winner receives $2,500, and third place $1,000.

Additionally, the winning cases – plus two honorable mentions – will be added to GlobaLens’ Base of the Pyramid Collection, one of the largest available from any publisher, and marketed to top business schools worldwide for adoption in business courses.

In 2014, a case study written by two professors from HEC Paris won first place. The case was about a German NGO that provides solar energy solutions in Tanzania and faces several challenges in order to scale its organization to generate much-needed revenue. The second-place case, from the Indian Institute of Management, examined the scale-up challenges for an initiative to prevent blindness in newborns.

And the third place winner, by authors from Rollins College in Florida and IPADE Business School in Mexico City, showcased a consultant to the Mayan gum growers as he had three months to launch the first organic biodegradable gum at a global tradeshow. This case is already being used in the classroom at IPADE. (Read about all the winning 2014 cases here.)

The 2013 first-place winner, “BTPN: Banking for the Bottom of the Pyramid in Indonesia,” has been adopted into five courses at four universities, including Duke and the University of Virginia. The second-place winner from 2013, “Hydraid: Safe Water for the Base of the Pyramid,” has been adopted at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. The third-place finisher, “ayzh at a Crossroad: Maternal Health for Whom?” was recently used for the C.K. Prahalad Case Competition at the 2014 India Business Conference at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. It also was adopted at the University of Exeter in the UK and at the University of Iowa.

The first through fifth place winners from the 2011 competition (the contest skipped a year in 2012) have been adopted at eight universities combined.

This year’s contest judges are: Paul Clyde, president of WDI and the Tom Lantos Professor of Business Administration at the U-M Ross School of Business; Hui Wen Chan, impact analytics and planning officer at Citi Foundation; Andrea Masini, associate professor of operations management and information technology at HEC Paris and co-author of 2014 case winner; and, Tara Sabre-Collier, impact investing specialist at GroFin Capital.

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