The Winona State University College of Business has made its mark on the international stage, with seniors Jahin Arefin and Seth Carr securing a third-place finish in the GLO-BUS Best Strategy Invitational (BSI), a global business simulation competition.
Nearly 300 teams from around the world, all the winners at their respective schools during the semester-long competition last fall, were invited to compete in the December 2024 BSI. The BSI organizers separated the 19 teams accepting invitations into two simulation industries, each competing for a BSI Grand Championship.
“The GLO-BUS business simulation was a unique and challenging experience to partake in,” said Carr. “It gave Jahin and me hands-on experience with financial projections, production/manufacturing capacity management, marketing decision-making, and the chance to compete against other students worldwide using the skills we’ve learned at WSU.”
The business simulation tasked students with managing a multi-million-dollar, Taiwan-based company specializing in action-capture cameras and drones. Participants applied business concepts to make data-driven, collaborative decisions aimed at enhancing performance and competitive advantage. Teams were challenged to navigate product design, workforce compensation, assembly operations, CSR, pricing, marketing, and respond to competitors, import duties, and exchange rate fluctuations using various business reports.
Arefin and Carr participated in the competition as a part of their senior capstone class, Strategic Management, taught by Professor Daniel Sauers.
“GLO-BUS provides our students with an opportunity to see how they measure up against their peers from around the world,” said Professor Sauers. “To say I’m proud of Jahin and Seth is an understatement. It was nice to see them finish their studies at Winona State on a high note.”
Professor Sauers — who will retire in August 2025 — will also be going out on a high note.
This past semester was the first time all five teams in Sauers’ Strategic Management class finished ranked in the top 100 in one or more of the performance criteria after 10 rounds of competition. Each round, company rankings are published, highlighting the highest-performing companies based on financial performance, earnings per share, return on equity, and stock price. In the Fall Semester, they competed against 2,804 teams from 141 colleges and universities participating in the simulation worldwide.
