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Year: 2014
PEAK Leadership Conference – Freshman & Sophomores
The Peak Leadership Conference is an interactive, three-day event that exposes college freshmen and sophomores to Prudential’s dynamic career paths and diverse, inclusive culture.
Students will have the opportunity to learn more about Prudential career paths in IT/digital, asset management, finance, marketing, accounting, and more. All travel and lodging expenses are covered by Prudential.
Applications are being accepted from now through December 15th. Students can learn more at www.prudential.com/peakleadership
The Peak Leadership conference will take place at Prudential’s corporate headquarters in Newark, NJ from May 17-20, 2015.
Because Prudential is committed to the power of an inclusive workplace, students who are Black, Hispanic, Native American, LGBT, female, as well as veterans and students with disabilities are encouraged to apply.
A ‘Smart’ Idea Wins UConn Students Praise, Award at Travelers Challenge
A team of UConn students that proposed a ‘smart-home’-style device for small businesses placed second in the 2014 Travelers IT Case Challenge on November 7 in Hartford.
“Our team was poised and prepared, earning second place and representing UConn well,” said Wei-Kuang Huang, the team mentor and a professor in the Operations and Information Management department.
The student team included: Khaly Huynh, Eddison Buenano, Jeffrey Avery and Rubi DeLeon. All are seniors majoring in business data analytics, except DeLeon, who is majoring in business administration. They will divide a $700 award and each has the opportunity to participate in a job interview with Travelers.
First place and a $1,400 prize was awarded to the Carlson School of Management from the University of Minnesota. Other participating schools included: Bentley University, Central Connecticut State University, Quinnipiac University and University of Wisconsin.
“The competition at Travelers was both challenging and rewarding,” Avery said. “Professor Huang was a great mentor and the group really came together as a whole to achieve an awesome result.”
For their case competition, the students had to determine what new investment would benefit the company’s business insurance division. They chose a “smart home technology” paired with a mobile encryption technology and pitched it as a service for small businesses.
The UConn team’s recommendation to Travelers was to utilize it to create new business value, allowing a small business owner to lock doors, view video and audio, control appliances and other tasks from a smartphone. In turn, this would benefit the insurance company because it would lower an insured company’s security risk profile.
“We had only about two weeks from the time we received the case to the time we presented to Travelers, but even before the case, we met weekly to research current IT trends in the insurance industry,” Avery said. “This came in handy during our question-and-answer session, following our presentation, because we were quite well-versed in issues surrounding IT. Secondly, it turns out that Travelers is currently implementing smart-home technology with some of its clients, so our case turned out to be highly relevant.”
Avery said the team had tremendous support from peers at UConn as well as alumni, who took the time to view practice presentations and provide valuable advice and insight. All four students were enrolled in Huang’s OPIM 3103 class, where they had already been given a case study relevant to the insurance industry. It turned out to be valuable practice when the Travelers’ case competition arose, Avery said.
The competition was open to IT students with high GPAs. The students spent more than 40 hours researching, meeting and rehearsing, Huang said. The teams presented their findings to a panel of Travelers senior management. They also had a chance to network with the executives during the competition, which was held at the Travelers’ headquarters in Hartford.
Pictured L to R: Wei-Kuang Huang, Rubi DeLeon, Khaly Huynh, Jeffrey Avery, and Eddison Buenano.
Yale Professor Vineet Kumar Visits UConn
On the invitation of the Marketing Department, Professor Vineet Kumar from Yale School of Management gave a research seminar about “The marketing impacts of operations and technology: the case of movies by mail” on Friday, November 7th. This research examines the rental-by-mail (RBM) business model, often called the “Netflix” business model. By developing a dynamic structural framework that is applicable for a variety of RBM services that include movies, games and books, he investigates consumers’ consumption and purchase decisions. His analysis suggests that consumers are forward-looking and strategically plan their consumption to maximize inter-temporal utility under the constraints of instantaneous quota and mailing time. Based on these insights on consumer behavior, he uncovers the optimal pricing and plan menu for the firm.
Vineet Kumar is Assistant Professor of Marketing at Yale School of Management. He received a Ph.D. in Industrial Administration from Carnegie Mellon University and taught at Harvard Business School as Assistant Professor of Business Administration from 2010 to 2014. His research interests focus on digital and social strategy. He has published in Marketing Science, Marketing Letters, and Harvard Business Review.
Vote for UConn by 11/21!
Time is running out! Your vote can send our team to another national championship!
The UConn Trailblazers—a team of five talented accounting students—is hoping to compete in the prestigious PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Challenge national case competition in New York in January.
To get there, the team must defeat Villanova, Texas, Arizona and Gonzaga by getting the most votes on Facebook. Only the top vote-getter may attend.
Trailblazer team members include Katie Pontoniec, Lauren Consoli, Jack Murphy, Giovanni Ninivaggi and Daniel Francoeur.
“There are five semifinalist teams, and the team that has the most votes when the polls close on Friday will go to New York in January to make their presentation to the national leadership of PwC,” said Professor David Papandria of the Accounting Department. “This is a big deal. Dozens of teams participated in the challenge, and our UConn team is so close.”
You can click on the link below to vote. Please vote once a day through Friday to help our team. Thank you!
Vote here »
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Graduate Career Connections
UConn welcomed 17 companies at the Graduate Business Learning Center for a fall Graduate Career Connections Event. More than 200 students participated in the event, of them about 130 were BAPM students, to learn about the various companies. A few companies conducted interviews on site. A press release with more information is soon to come, keep a look out!
Priceline Data Challenge
Priceline is partnering with UConn to host a data challenge. Students will perform research and build predictive models on customer search behaviors. The finalists will present their project to the Priceline executive Board at Priceline headquarters in Norwalk, CT. Registration for the competition will close on November 12th at midnight and the challenge official starts today! Results of the top team will be posted after Thanksgiving.
Team Registration: http://goo.gl/forms/1HkbMkw6uf
A “Taylor-Made” Experience: How Social Media Marketing Brought Me Into Taylor Swift’s World
As a marketing major entering my senior year at UConn, I discussed the idea of doing an independent study with my advisor about how artists leverage social media marketing in the music industry. Starting off, I needed to pick a specific artist and track their use of social media to investigate its effect on music sales. Needless to say, I picked Taylor Swift, who I’ve been an active fan of for years.
Throughout September, I researched Swift’s social media evolution from creating a MySpace account up through her joining Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr. I simultaneously reviewed her music sales and chart positions to see if I could connect the link between social media and sales. I noticed that Swift develops personal relationships with her fans by using social media as a channel to communicate not only her music, but also herself, as a person.
On a Thursday afternoon in early October I received a call from Swift’s team asking me to be a part of an exclusive Taylor Swift-related opportunity in two days. The invitation sounded almost too good to be true. So Saturday afternoon I traveled to Rhode Island, and I was subsequently shuttled over to Swift’s home. The entire experience was surreal.
I spent Saturday night at her home with several other fans and essentially hung out with Taylor Swift. We listened to the new album “1989” and got to hear the personal stories behind the songs. The listening session ended with a dance party to the lead single off the album “Shake It Off” where she singled me out amongst the crowd to dance with until the end of the song. Needless to say, I felt as if I was living in a daydream. That night we learned Swift and her team selected us because they had been looking for everyday, loyal fans on social media for months. Ironically, I became a part of my own social media project!
Upon getting home, I posted a Polaroid picture of Taylor and myself from the night on my social media accounts, and even my close friends were quick to dismiss it as photoshopped. The next morning, I woke up to find Taylor, herself, had Tweeted and Instagrammed our photo, validating the entire experience and essentially bringing my social media project full-circle.
A few weeks later, she posted a YouTube video that shows a behind-the-scenes look at the Secret Sessions she held at each of her four homes across the country. Fortunately, my one-on-one dancing session made the cut, which allows me to relive the entire experience.
So here I am back in the present, and all I can ask myself is this: what could the future possibly hold for me now? To be honest, I don’t have an answer, but I think Swift sums it up best with this lyric,
“It’s like I’ve got this music in my mind saying it’s gonna be alright.”
And it will be.
-Marc Castonguay
Fore! The 2014 MBA Golf Event
Some of the most fulfilling aspects of the MBA program at UConn are the opportunities you have as students to become exposed to new ideas, cultures, events, and build relationships with some of your close friends while doing so. In a first-year that came to an end all too quickly, some of my favorite memories have been those I’ve shared with my classmates, such as traveling to Illinois and Villanova to compete in case competitions, celebrating Diwali and learning the traditions behind the festival of lights, and working with all the members of the Consulting Club on their many projects throughout the year. Continue Reading
Faculty Research: A Firm-Driven Approach to Global Governance and Sustainability
American Business Law Journal (forthcoming)
Stephen Park and Gerlinde Berger-Walliser.
The multifaceted role of multinational corporations as quasi-regulators is of growing importance to international business. Corporations increasingly participate in two kinds of international rulemaking: (i) non-binding “soft” law standard setting; and (ii) self-regulation through private rules and standards. Soft law and private regulation often fill governance gaps left by incomplete and/or ineffective governmental regulation. One of the most prominent examples is sustainability rulemaking, in which corporations have become increasingly active due to their growing awareness of the directly-borne costs of environmental degradation and the potential strategic benefits of corporate social responsibility.Continue Reading