For the past eight years, INSEAD has organised the Product Games, a product management competition for MBA students. This year, Cambridge cemented its position as the Tech MBA of Europe by delivering two out of the four finalist teams, beating 58 other MBA teams in the competition!
The Initial Idea
The assignment given to MBA students worldwide was to design a GenAI product that would “transform the MBA experience”. The best four products would be invited to pitch their ideas at INSEAD.
Our team came together to leverage our complementary backgrounds and interests to try and win the competition. The team consisted of:
- Seki Guan: experienced product manager
- Wesley Hu: BizOps and StratOps expert
- Gabriel Yakub: experienced product manager & UX expert
- Weslyn Wang: machine learning engineer
- Floris Eland: strategy consultant & product marketer
Despite our varied experiences, we managed to combine our viewpoints and commit to a shared idea. We chose to create an AI assistant that keeps track of all relevant events happening around Cambridge and recommends how to prioritise your time based on your unique post-MBA goals. With so many cool and useful events happening around Cambridge, this was a product we all would have loved to use. That’s how Charlie the Campus Companion was born.
Refining Charlie
Our initial submission had good ideas and took around two weeks to build, but our concepts really came together after we were selected as a top four team and received mentorship from an experienced product manager that helped us refine our ideas.
Between busy MBA classes and the Cambridge Venture Project, we worked hard to improve our initial pitch, fleshing out details and ensuring we had a strong story to present. The most important ideas that helped us refine Charlie were:
- Keep it simple
- Put your customer at the centre of everything
- Show, don’t tell
Pitching at INSEAD
Wesley, Seki, and I travelled down to INSEAD on November 26th and pitched our idea in front of an impressive jury, which included directors of product for Microsoft and the Financial Times. Weslyn and Gabriel joined the pitch virtually.
The competition was fierce, with competing teams from Alliance Manchester MBA, the National University of Singapore (NUS), and another team from the Cambridge MBA.
While we received favourable feedback from the jury, NUS managed to clinch the win with a unique product and interactive presentation elements. With NUS traveling all this way with the full team, everyone was happy to see their efforts rewarded.
The finalist teams shared a meal after the competition, where all team members mingled and talked to their peers.
Even though we did not win, the experience of crafting a real potential product, fine-tuning our product pitch, and receiving feedback from such impressive judges is an absolute highlight of the MBA so far.
For more on MBA competitions, treks and activities, ‘beyond academics’, visit our student experience pages here>