The case was delivered by Equinor, Premium Partner of BIICC 2019. Equinor has the previous year actively shaped their portfolio towards developing and obtaining new and profitable energy sources. The company’s vision is to provide clean hydrogen for sectors where renewables have clear limitations.
The task for the students included suggesting new solutions to help the company with the commercial dimension of creating clean hydrogen from natural gas, such as identifying markets suitable for switching to hydrogen.
After 30 intense hours of hard work, lack of sleep, and without access to their mobile phones, the Canadian team consisting of the four students Carson Curiston, Evan Notley, Laura Vu and Eliano Rexho impressed the judges with their excellent solution and presentation, and won the competition.
"BIICC 2019 was an unforgettable experience. We loved that unlike many cases we have done in the past it provided us with a newly emerging concept that required fresh and unique solutions. It certainly necessitated a lot of research and thought during a short time, but that is what makes a competition so rewarding", Rexho says.
The team explained how they meant the marine industry were best suited for hydrogen-based solutions, and they suggested building the production up from the bottom before going big.
"We are thrilled and honored to have placed first in a competition with so many bright competitors and prestigious universities, and are very thankful to BI for hosting us", Rexho says.
Tough International Competition
Runar Tjersland, Special Advisor in Marketing & Trading in Equinor, announced the winner of the main case.
"This has been an exciting day, fantastic performance by everyone, and it sounds like a cliché, but there are only winners here", Tjersland stated.
Through six intense days 12 international teams from ten different countries competed to become the BIICC Champion 2019. The competition started with a warm-up case delivered by Gjensidige, and followed by the 30-hour main case from Equinor.
In the grand finale, the top three teams presented their solutions in front of a panel of judges consisting of senior representatives from the strategic partners of BIICC. Each team had 15 minutes to present, followed by a 15 minutes Q&A session.
Causeway Consulting from University of Hong Kong and Vanda Consulting from National University of Singapore came in second and third in the competition.
EVA Consulting from UNSW Sydney won the warm-up case. The picture below is from a lunch the winning team got invited to by CEO and Investment Director in Gjensidige.
Nordic Guardian Consultancy won BIICC Open, a parallel competition where BI students solves the same case as the international teams.