SMU sets new record with multiple award wins in the global EFMD Case Writing Competition
- SMU bags three awards in the latest competition
- Series of awards makes SMU the most consistent winner in the last three years
- Biggest triumph among Asian institutions and the only Singaporean winner
Singapore Management University (SMU) has scored a new feat again, hauling a record-breaking number of awards three years in a row in the latest annual EFMD Case Writing Competition. This makes SMU the most consistent and biggest prize winner overall in the last three installments of the established worldwide competition organised by the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD).
With three SMU cases bagging honours this year, SMU maintains the lead in the number of awards won among Asian institutions, and remains the sole Singaporean educational institution to have earned acclaim in the renowned global case writing competition. Together with three awards last year, and two more the year before, the tally over these three years stands at eight awards in total.
The winning cases were co-authored by a combination of case writers from the Case Writing Initiative (CWI), part of SMU’s Centre for Management Practice (CMP), as well as faculty, staff and academic partners. One of the winning cases is a collaboration with Peter Williamson, Honorary Professor of International Management, Fellow and Director of Studies in Management at Jesus College, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. It is also the third time that SMU has won in the “Inclusive Business Models” category.
“When we started five years ago with the Case Writing Initiative, I expressed the hope that we would one day win one of the EFMD awards. Little did I expect it to happen so fast. Five years later, I am very pleased and proud that we have received recognition for a series of our cases. Winning eight case awards in three consecutive years puts us at the top of innovators in education. This validates SMU’s practice-oriented thought leadership. We may be a young university but our track record proves that we are on the way to be a leading Asian institution in business and management education,” said Professor Arnoud De Meyer, President, SMU.
“CMP is very proud that our work has withstood the rigorous tests over time and SMU has upheld our lead in the competition, overturning the tradition of Western institutions dominating content for an important educational tool like case studies. We are extremely delighted that SMU has gained recognition for producing truly world-class, leading-edge case studies that develop original business knowledge capital about Asia. This accolade marks our best gift as CMP crosses its fifth year, having published almost 180 cases now used by more than 120 universities globally,” added Professor Philip Charles Zerrillo, Executive Director of the Centre for Management Practice and the Case Writing Initiative, SMU.
SMU bagged the following three awards out of the 17 in total in the most recent competition, results of which were announced in June 2017:
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SMU’s Winning Cases in EFMD Case Writing Competition 2016 (announced in 2017) |
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No. |
Cases by SMU |
Categories of SMU Wins Brief Descriptions of Categories |
Authors |
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1 |
Data Analytics at Alexandra Health System: A New Journey in the Healthcare Industry
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Responsible Leadership Cases submitted address challenges business leaders are facing as the operating environment of corporations has become more complex; it includes technological, political, financial, environmental and social forces whose interaction, at global and local levels, obliges corporations to consider the demands of multiple stakeholders inside and outside the organisation. |
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2 |
Future For Children: A Social Enterprise Project In Transition
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Inclusive Business Models This category is about commercially viable models that include the poor on the demand side as clients and customers, and on the supply side as employees, producers and business owners at various points in the value chain. Cases should try to demonstrate that these business models have the ability to create benefits for the poor and contribute to human development on a significant scale. |
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3 |
BPI Globe BanKO: Reshaping the Philippines Rural Banking System
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Integrating the Innovation Pipelines (new category) Integrating the pipeline from ideation on defined priorities to launching and scaling up new products and services. Cases should address bottom up or top down innovation. It should demonstrate how the innovation pipeline was integrated, or how innovation brought together stakeholders and aligned them on a common agenda to realise climate impact through the execution of coordinated actions. |
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The competition has been held annually for over 30 years to encourage and support the writing and creation of new and innovative case material. EFMD is the international body that awards the EQUIS accreditation in high-quality management education, and SMU’s Lee Kong Chian School of Business (LKCSB) is one of the youngest institutions to be EQUIS-accredited for all its programmes, from the undergraduate to PhD levels.
The judging criteria include case quality (50%), teaching notes (30%) and innovation (20%). The other categories focused on specific issues and regions.
CMP works with SMU’s various Schools – including Business, Accountancy, Law, Information Systems, and Social Sciences – as well as its Offices, Institutes and Centres. It has published almost 180 cases so far on Asian businesses and organisations across numerous topics. These cases help inform management thinking, and connect the University’s expertise with practice that improves efficiency for businesses, organisations, countries and the region. CMP also conducts case writing workshops across the region, develops original work to support case competitions and students participating in such challenges, and produces publications and thought leadership articles.
SMU enjoys a unique pedagogical advantage in having its faculty teach using its own case studies in undergraduate, graduate and executive education programmes. The process of case writing also allows SMU faculty to develop richer experiences with the business community as they apply academic ideas to real-world situations.
For more information on the latest winning cases, please see the Appendix: Executive Summaries of SMU’s Award-Winning Cases, EFMD Case Writing Competition 2016.
For more information on SMU’s Case Writing Initiative, please visit the SMU website: http://casewriting.smu.edu.sg/
For more information on EFMD’s Case Writing Competition 2016, please visit the EFMD website: http://www.efmd.org/research/awards/case-writing-competition-winners-2016/
Appendix: Executive Summaries of SMU’s Award-Winning Cases, EFMD Case Writing Competition 2016
1) Data Analytics at Alexandra Health System: A New Journey in the Healthcare Industry
The case is set in June 2014, when Lau Wing Chew, Chief Transformation Officer (CTO) at Alexandra Health System (AHS) in Singapore was highlighting the achievements of the data analytics initiative made by the Health Analytics Unit (HAU) at AHS to his management team. Although the initiative was still in its initial stage, multiple medical and administrative areas, such as the operation theatre dashboard, ageing-in-place and population health initiatives targeting patients’ health expenditures and outcomes had been improved with the help of data analytics.
The journey to develop the data analytics initiative had commenced in 2011, when Lau reviewed a set of data presented by the Accident & Emergency (A&E) Department, and realised that non-emergency cases at A&E were taking up too much of hospital resources. He also noted other pressing resource-related issues, such as acute bed shortages and patients not showing up for their appointments at specialist outpatient clinics, causing a sub-optimal utilisation of critical resources like doctors and appointment rooms. Lau knew that given the right metrics, predictive analytics could improve the situation.
In the following three years, the HAU leveraged the capabilities of data analytics to roll out initiatives such as population health and ageing-in-place programmes, and implementing solutions into patient medical billing and operating theatre dashboards. Although these unremitting efforts were showing results, the challenges ahead were significant. The HAU team not only needed to get buy-in at an operational level with different business units, but also needed to increase health awareness in patients. How could AHS improve the data analytics initiative further, and plan its resources optimally?
Through this case study, students will gain an understanding of the critical success factors and challenges faced during the implementation of analytics projects, as well as learn how to operationalise such a project within an organisation.
2) Future For Children: A Social Enterprise Project In Transition
This case is set in January 2015 and follows Future for Children (FFC), a poverty eradication charity initiated by Swiss banker, Daniel Elber, in Muntigunung, Bali (Indonesia). FFC began by piloting a phased development programme in one village by establishing local social enterprises that address key development hurdles and improve livelihood outcomes.
Following the success of the pilot programme, the initiative is now ready to be replicated and rolled out to other villages in Muntigunung. However, some key challenges need to be addressed. For example, management of the social enterprises needs to be handed over to the local community. In addition, more funds are needed to replicate and scale up; and a sense of community ownership of the programme needs to take hold. Moreover, the business model of FFC needed to be reviewed for its efficacy in achieving the mission’s goal.
This case provides students the opportunity to learn about the importance of engaging local partners for successful implementation of social programmes and a strategic problem-solving approach to creating positive social impact. Students will examine the challenges faced when a capacity building project transitions into a profitable enterprise and brainstorm and evaluate solutions to such issues.
https://casewriting.smu.edu.sg/case/future-children-social-enterprise-project-transition
3) BPI Globe BanKO: Reshaping the Philippines Rural Banking System
This case is set in December 2014, and discusses the business model and challenges facing BPI Globe BanKO (“BanKO”). Established in 2009, BanKO is the Philippine’s first mobile phone-based, microfinance-focused savings bank. At that time, statistics showed that eight out of ten Filipinos did not have access to a bank. A few informal moneylenders provided some 40% of small-scale business lending in the market, at interest rates that could touch around 240% per annum. The population living in 40% of the Philippines’ municipalities did not have easy access to a physical bank branch.
BanKO intends to address these issues by leveraging its combined assets in banking and telecommunications through a partnership between the Bank of the Philippines Island (BPI), the oldest operating bank in Southeast Asia; Globe Telecom, a leading telecommunications company; and the Ayala Corporation, one of the largest conglomerates in the Philippines.
BanKO aims to provide the delivery of a range of banking services through mobile solutions supported by a network of partner outlets. These outlets are existing establishments in the community, such as pawnshops and grocery retailers, which have been selected, trained and accredited to conduct customer identification for new account applications, and perform cash-in and cash-out transactions. They are the critical link to bringing financial services to communities located even in remote locations. BanKO also offers loans to microfinance institutions, including rural banks and cooperatives. As it expanded its product range and customer base, BanKO began to extend its ecosystem to involve a range of other partners including fast moving consumer group (FMCG) companies such as Nestle, Proctor & Gamble and Unilever, “sari-sari” stores, social media providers such as Facebook, local governments, cooperatives and aid agencies.
While BanKO’s performance has been encouraging, the team has yet to firmly establish that its platform and business model are indeed viable and sustainable over the long-term. In addition, it needs to be ascertained how the business could be further expanded, while ensuring that the ecosystem does not become too unwieldy to manage.
Through this case, participants will have an opportunity to understand the concept of ‘ecosystem advantage’, and how firms, such as Ayala, can leverage ecosystems – both internal and external (that is partnerships with outlets and cooperatives) to deliver complex solutions, while maintaining corporate focus. This case would also be useful in illustrating disruptive innovation, as the BanKO business model has a number of elements that could potentially disrupt the traditional banking system. In addition, the case can be used to describe how social innovation, in terms of ‘banking the unbanked’ can take place.
https://casewriting.smu.edu.sg/case/bpi-globe-banko-reshaping-philippines-rural-banking-system