Students of the Graduate School of Management of St. Petersburg State University (GSOM SPbU) took second place on case championship of IX Youth career forum, that was organized by Saint Petersburg Employment Centre.

 

Case subjects were related to the development of entrepreneurship and employment in small-business and medium-business companies in Saint Petersburg.

 

GSOM team has developed a concept of a platform, where students will be able to start receiving rating for free projects, so later to get an access to internships with monetary compensation, interesting diploma themes and internships. Rating and level of competencies of a student will be confirmed by career centers of universities. An interest of the platform for business — an opportunity to cut down costs on conducting investigations and search of staff.

 

The team of the business school consisted of five second-year master students — Nikita Ilichev, Oleg Zemskov, David Osipov, Denis Dorofeev (programme Management) and Oleg Kalmykov (programme corporate Finance).

 

 

“Firstly, we identified a type of the case and decided to generate awesome ideas, without going further into searching the underlying problem. Then, came up with a concept of a platform of interaction, divided it to MVP (minimum viable product) and core product. Idea of MVP were offered by mentors, as they are interested in a practical orientation. For the effectiveness, we divided tasks — three of us worked on MVP, one of us — on presentation and another one of us — on a financial model. After the project defence, jury suggested we will think about implementation of the idea, looking forward for proposals from organizators”, — told David Osipov, a team member.  

 

Among criteria of selecting winners — understanding and urgency of the problem, creative and complex solution of a task, relevance and quality of presentation. 

 

The jury of the case-championship included Yulia Gorokhova, Director of the Employment Center, Lev Kuznetsov, Director of the Center for the Development and Support of Entrepreneurship, Maxim Nikitinsky, Chairman of the Youth Entrepreneurship Committee for St. Petersburg of the Opora Rossii public organization, and Natalya Rozhdestvenskaya, Ingria, Project Consultant for the Business Incubator.

 

In Summer, the experts of the business school, in the article for the platform Rusbase, told how to prepare, build a team and win the case championship. (Available in Russian only)