Johns Hopkins students take first place in Biopharmaceutical Case Competition

Students from the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School took home the $6,000 first prize at the 4th Annual Biopharmaceutical Case Competition hosted by Rutgers Business School.

The competition, held Nov. 20, pitted teams of three to five students from nine top MBA and Healthcare Management programs, including the Wharton School of Business, MIT Sloan School of Management, and Yale School of Management, in a competition to see which team could develop the strongest business plan addressing a real-world pharmaceutical industry challenge.

JHU's Carey Business School took first place, followed by Rutgers Business School, the Yale School of Management, and Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business.

The competition was sponsored by pharmaceutical companies Bayer, Novo Nordisk, Novartis, Herspiegel Consulting, Campbell Alliance, Sanofi Pasteur, and Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney, PC. Executives from the sponsoring companies judged cases on the feasibility of their plan as well as the ability to present and support their findings.

Carey students have taken part in two other notable competitions this month:

• The 3rd Annual Healthcare Business Competition was held Nov. 14 at the Carey Business School's Harbor East campus. Ten teams from top business schools competed for $6,000 worth of prizes. The case directed teams to produce strategies for reversing the anti-vaccine stigma using social media tactics. Wharton School of Business took home first prize in that event.

• On Nov. 21, students from across Johns Hopkins University took part in the first leg of a series of competitions as part of the Venture Capital Investment Competition. The national competition is the largest venture capital competition for graduate students with more than 70 business schools competing. The competition stages preliminary competitions culminating in the finals held in North Carolina in April. At the Nov. 21 event, teams of Johns Hopkins students competed to determine who would represent the university at the Mid-Atlantic regional competition, which will be held Jan. 29. The VCIC is co-organized by two Carey clubs: the Innovation Factory and the Private Equity & Venture Capital Club.