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Business Masters is one of the world's finest and biggest international case study competitions. Organized by students from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology it challenges the best Bachelor, Master and PhD students from around the world to compete against each other in a real life business case scenario. Not only business skills and technical understanding are necessary, but also the feeling for entrepreneurship and a sense for market opportunities is needed.
In close cooperation with our partners BASF and The Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship the Business Masters organizational team tries to combine this competitive event with a great fresh atmosphere for international exchange and friendship.
Business Masters shall also give you the platform for international business contacts, bringing future leaders and entrepreneurs together.
Come to Karlsruhe and challenge the best!
History
Looking for a new challenge and the freedom to establish a business case competition according to their own imagination and principles was the motivation for four industrial engineering students from Karlsruhe University, to develop Business Masters. Their idea was, to create a case challenge fully organized from students for students, with people from all different kinds of international universities and backgrounds, who carried an entrepreneurial spirit and were eager to challenge the best.
Eventually although the team was spread all over the world, Christian initiated the event in 2003 with its first sponsors Booz Allen Hamilton, Deutsche Bahn and MLP. Especially because the team was separated and in order prove the concept, he came up with a three year vision to grow the event from a national scale to a global event.
Thus, Business Masters started small on a national level (plus Austria) in 2003 and invited 8 teams to Karlsruhe. In the first edition of Business Masters the participants were asked to choose a large company with operating business in Germany. The company's market positioning had to be described, in order to develop a strategy for the upcoming enlargement of the European Union in 2004.
Reaching out for the best students on a more international level, the Business Masters team managed to win a new major sponsor for the second edition in the following year: Deutsche Lufthansa, one of the biggest airlines in the world, flew in 12 teams from Europe and the USA that worked on business models for new applications of the Galileo Satellite System with an introduction at the Beijing Olympics in 2006.
In the third year, Business Masters finally fulfilled its goal to be one of the finest and largest international case study competitions, spreading the world from Asia to America.
When BASF joined the event in 2007, Business Masters has established itself as one of the prime student competitions in the world attracting students from top universities all around the world, such as Harvard, MIT, LSE, Fudan or Beijing University. As one can imagine, the organization for such an exclusive event became more and more complex, driven by the desire to make Business Masters a little better every time. Hence, over the years the Business Masters club has grown along with our international reputation, attracting many determined students of KIT to be part of it.
Topics like Social Entrepreneurship, Green Transportation or Eco City added a more sustainable touch to the event. These contemporary issues of global relevance combined with exclusive side events and the familial setting evoked a highly stimulating atmosphere that usually led to stunning results in the final presentations.
As an effect of the financial crisis, Business Masters was forced to downsize in 2009. The organization team agreed that the lack of money should not affect the quality of the event. They worked even harder to compensate the smaller budget and integrated Christian Schwarzkopf and Tim Lagerpusch, two of the founders of Business Masters as sponsoring partners with their new initiation, the Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, a start-up incubator at KIT. The overwhelmingly positive participant's feedback encouraged the team and partners to continue with a stronger emphasis on technical applications and feasible business plans.
Therefore, the 8th edition of Business Masters in 2010 will be looking for a business case that is more entrepreneurial and give opportunities for continuing thoughts and work on the topic.
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