I woke up this morning looking forward to the rest of the day. IIM Calcutta’s 3-day business summit Intaglio 2012 had just started last evening, and there were many, many events to look forward today – and boy, did the day live up to my expectations!
Billed as Asia’s largest business school summit, Intaglio had the best students from the bestB-schools visiting campus today. In the span of a few hours, I met students from three continents, and of course almost all the IIMs.I enjoyed watching the best match wits against the brightest, but then I was expecting as much; after all Intaglio is the best Bschool summit India has to offer!
The day started off with Marketrix, a digital marketing competition that was being run in partnership with an educational service provider called U: B Qool. Judged by Prof C. D. Mitra from IIM Calcutta, Marketrix contestants set about developing a marketing plan for the company. It was an insightful experience, seeing teams come up to different approaches to the same issue.
The next event was Modulus, which was an interactive trading event, where teams of three contestants took part in a simulated securities trading game. The finance whiz-kids from IIM Rohtak won this one, but not being a fin guy myself, I couldn’t help but be awe of all participants.
After Modulus came the competition I was looking forward to, Olympus. Being the flagship event of Intaglio, Olympus is a much vied-for contest. As such, it attracts strong participants from the world over, and it was a pleasure watching them compete in the initial rounds today. The first round was especially worth mentioning, since
it was a bit of a Con – after the round was done it was declared to be an ‘icebreaker’ round meant to warm things up, and the actual contest was yet to start! There were quite a number of varied rounds; one involving role-play and acting skills, another a general knowledge quiz, a fun round involving Lego blocks, and a round of card games where
street-smartness was rewarded, followed by another round of card games where trust was rewarded! The contest tried to test the adaptability of potential leaders, and in my opinion it sure did succeed.
State of Affairs, another competition, presented an interesting operations case study challenge formulated by IIM Calcutta Professor Preetam Basu, and judged by himself and Prof BalaramAviatthur. This event was dominated by IIM Calcutta students.
Another interesting case study event was Cognizant’s Great Innovation Challenge, where the contestants faced a real-life scenario about an unnamed American airline. The solutions that contestants came up with were so unique and insightful, I’m sure that some of them ought to be implemented by the company soon!
And then there was The Empires of the Mind, a fun, sporty challenge involving game theory in, well, games. The contest simulated the IPL bidding process, where teams tried to maximize their winnings in an IPL-style auction process. The day wrapped up with a riveting Hindi murder-mystery play called Kashmakash, by students from IIM
Calcutta’s Dramatics Cell, involving an over-ambitious film director who couldn’t cope with failure.
Speaking of mysteries and puzzles, I’m really looking forward to Quizzical, the quiz competition with fabled quizmaster Souvik Basu. That happens tomorrow, on the second day of Intaglio ’12. Hope to see you there