On March 21, a group of six Hopkins students finished in first place in the Strategic Allocation of Business Resources Competition (SABRE) competition at the American Marketing Association’s 35th Annual International Collegiate Conference.
The undergraduate team, which was composed of students from Hopkins’s Entrepreneurship and Management Program, competed against teams from several other institutions.
The SABRE business simulation places teams into a competitive environment in which they must make long-term decisions for their hypothetical companies in a relatively short period of time.
The competition tries to simulate the trajectory of a business model. Each decision in the simulation is considered by the judges to be one year in the real-life business world. By the end of the competition, the Hopkins team’s hypothetical company had a projected value of $304,439,000. This total was almost $100,000,000 more than the second-place winner, Temple University.
Hopkins has had great success in the competition, finishing in first place this year and in third place last year. These results are especially remarkable when one considers that Hopkins has only been participating for two years.
The win is also significant because Hopkins finished ahead of third-place University of Pennsylvania Wharton Business School.
Junior James Fanto, president-elect of Hopkins’ chapter of AMA, attributes the team’s win to its competitiveness.
“For most of us this was our first go-around with a business simulation. Even still, all of us are hugely competitive so we went into it hoping for a victory. To be able to go out, compete against Wharton and come out on top gives us a great sense of accomplishment,” Fanto said.
The group is not taking the win lightly, and is looking forward to future improvements Hopkins’ business programs and competitions.
“We’re still not satisfied; we may have won this competition but there are other areas of our chapter that we can still improve upon. It was certainly a move in the right direction but we’re not done just yet,” Fanto said.
The group’s win has had far-reaching effects beyond just the sense of accomplishment and monetary compensation of $500. A banquet of 1400 marketing students and faculty from all over North America was held to congratulate the students. SABRE participant senior David Carasiti even received a job offer from an ad agency as a result of the program.
“The AMA has allowed me to network with senior executives I would never have otherwise met from firms like the Baltimore Ravens and Apple iTunes... and at the conference, I met college students from all over the world. The competition allowed me to show off what I have learned in my Entrepreneurship and Management classes and it proves that even without a business or marketing major like most of the other colleges, Johns Hopkins can still bring it,” Carasiti said
This win is an important gain for the Entrepreneurship and Management minor in earning credibility.
“The JHU AMA Chapter allows for the unique opportunity for members to both lead and be led, an enriching experience that has allowed our organization to accomplish more than ever before. Though we are a marketing organization, the skills that I and others have learned over the past year encompass far more than just marketing—I have noted significant improvements in leadership, logistics and professional relations. With 75 members and a breadth of programming, this past year has undoubtedly marked a transformation in the AMA at JHU,” senior Gerrard Clark, outgoing AMA president, said.
