Nanyang Business School became the first Asian b-school to win in the world’s largest MBA case competition in January.

A team of four students on Nanyang’s part-time MBA traveled to Montreal, Canada for the John Molson MBA International Case Competition, and were placed second runners up. The John Molson is the world’s oldest such competition and known as the Olympics of MBA case competitions.

The Nanyang team faced challenges from the outset. Leaving aside the small matter of traveling to the other side of the world, and leaving sunny Singapore for sub-zero Quebec, the team was told they might be disqualified as their coach was unable to travel to Canada for medical reasons.

In the end the team, consisting of Widy Kiswanto, Mohsin Fazal, Victoriano Hui and Johnny Widodo managed to enter the competition with a coach borrowed from the University of Düsseldorf.

The event drew 144 participants from 36 universities including the University of South Carolina, Purdue University, the University of British Columbia and the University of Alberta. More than 200 senior business executives served as judges.

There were three rounds in the competition: the round robin, the semi-final and the three-team final.

In each round, teams were locked in a room with no computers or coaches, and had three hours to study and analyze a complex business case and prepare a 25-minute presentation which they then delivered to a panel of five business executives.

Nanyang’s final case was on Naya bottled water and asked for business recommendations on sustainability issues.

In a recent article for the Singapore Straits Times, Widodo describes how the team divided responsibilities, with Widodo leading the brainstorming discussions and designing the flow of the presentations; Fazal selling the recommendations; Kiswanto creating the look and feel of the presentations and Hui acting as chief strategist and running the analysis on all the cases.

The team attributes their success to the way the Nanyang MBA curriculum challenged them to think innovatively. In particular, says Widodo, the Corporate Business Strategy course gave them the skills and mindset needed to do well in the competition.