Management School hosts Universities Business Challenge Worldwide
The Management School recently hosted the semi-final of the Universities Business Challenge Worlwide 2019-20.
15 teams, including five from the University of Liverpool, took part in the event with around 85 students and staff in attendance.
The UBC is the UK’s longest established simulation-based competition designed to help develop students’ employability and enterprise skills. Supported by the University of Liverpool Management School and other leading UK universities and graduate employers, over 30,000 students have benefitted from taking part in the UBC since it was founded in 1998.
This year over 200 teams from across the UK took part in the first round of the competition. Over a five week period of online trading, teams were required to act as a board of directors and take responsibility for improving the performance of a fictional but realistic company, taking into account its responsibilities to various stakeholders.
Teams were then ranked in terms of financial and non-financial performance of the company, with the top 55 teams progressing onto a live one-day semi-final event hosted at Universities across the UK, including Liverpool.
Deborah Cardwell, Managing Director of UBC Worldwide, said “ULMS hosted a wonderful event at which 15 undergraduate teams were tasked with coming up with ideas for a start-up business, creating a business model canvas for a social enterprise and running their start-up business for its first 3 months.
"In addition to this, teams had the opportunity to explore how IBM’s Watson and other leading edge technologies are enabling IBM to tackle global issues such as climate change, food poverty, cancer and delivering high-quality education”
Nick Drape, Lecturer on the Accounting and Finance Programme, said “It was another fantastic year with regards the UBC this year. The students taking part had a fantastic time and were able to build many skills which will serve them well for the future.
"Unfortunately none of our teams made the final this year however, we were particularly delighted to be able to host a semi-final for the first time in the Management School. The semi-final was a huge success and the UBC team have already asked if they can return next year. We are already looking forward to hosting them again and hopefully next year a team from Liverpool will win the competition!”