'Cerebrate' and stand out

http://www.todayonline.com/articles/147678.asp

Business // Tuesday, October 10, 2006

SINGAPORE'S institutions of higher learning have been busy marketing and branding themselves to local and international students and this has been particularly true for the National University of Singapore's (NUS) Business School and its MBA programme.
.
While NUS has the brand advantage of being Singapore's oldest university, for its MBA programme it has to compete with globally-recognised brand names like the Chicago Graduate School of Business and Insead, which have campuses in Singapore, as well as local rivals like Nanyang Technological University and Singapore Management University.
.
So in such a crowded market place, how can NUS make its MBA programme stand out?
.
Associate Professor Michael Shih of NUS Business School seems to have the answer. It's in what he calls "The Largest MBA Competition in the World".
.
The competition known as Cerebration is based on the idea of inviting MBA students throughout the world to propose ideas on how companies can expand into the market of the student's nationality.
.
So, for example, a team of British students from Insead could propose ideas on how Eu Yan Sang could market Traditional Chinese Medicine products in Britain.
.
The event is financed by corporate sponsors. To qualify as a corporate sponsor, a company stumps up $20,000. However, sponsorship is not just a case of cash payments. Companies contribute their case studies and contestants at Cerebration are challenged to come up with solutions for the sponsor companies.
.
Companies that have sponsored Cerebration include household names such as Cerebos, Osim, Ron Kaufman and Thai Express.
.
Case studies for the competition were submitted starting from November last year, and at the grand finals of Cerebration in March this year, there was a record turn out of 641 teams from more than 100 business schools from 31 different countries. —

Tang Li