Business case competition strips away tech to test real-world skills

On a three-hour clock, with nothing but pen, paper, and the minds of their teammates, undergraduates from universities across the world sit down to solve a business problem that matters. No laptops. No phones. No algorithm to lean on. Just analysis, conversation, and the pressure of time.

This is the Global Finals of the HSBC/HKU Business Case Challenge, a competition that has run for nearly two decades by deliberately stripping away the technological scaffolding that students rely on in their daily lives. The constraint is the point. William Chiu, director of global philanthropy and secretary of the advisory committee of the foundation, explains the philosophy plainly: students must work through financial analysis themselves, sketch their own charts, and articulate their thinking with clarity. "We are testing a lot of skills – teamwork, financial literacy, common sense, presentation and adaptability," he says. The foundation does not simply repeat the same competition year after year. Each iteration asks what can be done differently, what can be improved, how the learning can stay tethered to the real world students will enter after graduation.

This year introduced a new element called the Boardroom Challenge, designed to make the experience more interactive than a traditional presentation to judges. Students now engage directly with senior executives, forced to respond in the moment to questions and pushback they cannot anticipate. For Praew Praewinkant, a member of the University of Sydney team that won the Global Finals, this meant thinking about how different people might interpret the same information. "You always have to take into account that they might have a completely different outlook on the case," she said. The Hong Kong Round, won by City University of Hong Kong, showed how this principle plays out in practice. Their case involved Open Dialogue, a brand, and the team did not simply read about it—they visited stores across Hong Kong, spoke to sales staff, and used the city itself as a research laboratory. Adam Sutherland Gear, a CityU team member, believed this groundwork distinguished them. "I think that probably distinguished us," he said.

When CityU advanced to the Global Finals, they carried that local knowledge into an international arena. Competing against teams from other regions taught lessons in communication that went beyond the cases themselves. Jeenendra Agarwal, another CityU member, noticed that some overseas teams excelled at distilling complex ideas into language judges could grasp. "Something that I really picked up was how well they were able to distill the ideas, how well they were able to say exactly what they wanted to say and present it in a way that the judges and people were really able to understand," he said. The insight cuts to something fundamental: even rigorous analysis loses its force if it cannot be explained clearly. In a competition where presentation matters as much as research, the ability to make complexity legible becomes a competitive advantage.

The cases themselves ranged across industries and challenges. One asked how PopMart could build a brand that lasted beyond a temporary spike in demand. Another framed Hong Kong's stablecoin landscape not as a pure finance problem but as a communication problem. The case that won the Sydney team's attention involved Chartwell Capital, a Hong Kong investment firm led by founder Ronald Chan. The students saw the challenge not as a growth question alone but as a sustainability question: how could the business reduce its dependence on one central figure and strengthen itself as a platform? Their recommendation followed a logical sequence—attract new investors, then retain them—and financial analysis gave the proposal both strategic direction and commercial discipline.

The 180-minute window forced a particular kind of collaboration. Someone had to read the case material and extract the essential facts. Someone else had to work through the numbers. A third person had to test the logic of the argument. A fourth had to shape it all into a presentation judges could follow. Jacob Callaway, another Sydney team member, reflected on what this meant: "If any of us went in as an individual trying to tackle that three-hour case, I don't think we would have been able to do it." His teammate Andris Dang added the other side of the equation: "With the team, you know that everyone is strong in what they do and brings a lot to the table." This is not abstract teamwork. It is the specific, pressurized kind that happens when a deadline is real and the work cannot be divided into neat silos.

Beyond the cases themselves, the competition offered students a chance to experience Hong Kong. They were mixed into cross-country teams for a heritage hunt in Stanley, sampling local food and tracking down landmarks. There was a boat cruise along Victoria Harbour with games and activities. But Chiu frames these moments as more than breaks from the work. They are part of the education. The competition creates a setting where students must exercise judgment, adapt to uncertainty, work under pressure, and present a shared view with confidence—qualities that classrooms struggle to teach. "AI can help with efficiency, but it cannot replace critical-thinking, common sense and the ability to make decisions," Chiu said. In the challenge room, students still had to weigh incomplete information, organize their thoughts, and take responsibility for their recommendations. That is the real skill the foundation has been investing in for nearly two decades: not the ability to find an answer, but the capability to think clearly, decide wisely, and explain yourself when it matters.