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The Global Final of the Global Student Challenge took place fully online for the first time ever on May 2^nd till May 8^th, 2021. This was the biggest Global Final ever with 197 students in 48 participating teams from 33 different universities and 17 countries battling against each other for the Champion title and EUR 10,000 in cash prizes!  

Highlights of the Global Final Week

During the Global Final Week, students played 4 rounds of the world’s leading business game in value chain management, The Fresh Connection. The team with the best weighted score wins the champion title! Apart from game-play, there was also a wide variety of fun activities for students to network with their peers from across the globe such as, ice-breakers, networking roulettes, interactive games, and more!  

Sunday to Monday – 2 & 3 May 2021

The first two days were kick-off days. On Sunday, we welcomed all 197 students on our online event platform, Scoocs. The day started with an introduction session that included an interactive quiz as an ice-breaker. During this session, the students got their first assignment: participate in the organized gaming activities after the introduction session to collect words as a team and put together the cot.  

After the gaming activities, each team needed to form a sentence with their collected words. If correct, the sentence was “At Inchainge, We Develop Value Chain Leaders”. Many of them did guess it correctly! The game activities consisted of Song quiz, Guess the Flag, Pictionary, I go on Holiday hands up, and more. Furthermore, networking sessions were also organized for the students to get to know each other based on their role in The Fresh Connection: Sales, Purchasing, Operations and Supply Chain.  

On Monday, Hans Kremer, business partner at Inchainge, introduced the first round of The Fresh Connection with an inspiring opening ceremony on Supply Chain Resilience. After some networking, round one was opened and the battle officially started. All of this really made it a great start of the Global Final!

Tuesday to Wednesday – 4 & 5 May 2021

Tuesday started with a leaderboard announcement. Teams were excited to hear the results of round 1. This is how the first ranking looked like:  

Right away on Tuesday, they started round 2! This was a really tough and challenging round with many new variables in the game. These are some interesting statistics after round 2:

• New high score : 37.76 %
• 12 teams have a positive ROI
• 5 teams did better than their ROI of Round 1
• 4 out 48 teams have a double-digit positive ROI J
• 33 out of 48 teams have a double-digit negative ROI L
• Highest positive change: + 14.69
• Average ROI decreased to minus 27.05% from plus 14.0%

On Wednesday, they received the leaderboard of round two and it looked like this:

Apart from working hard on The Fresh Connection and stressing over round two, the students were divided into random teams of max. 7 people for a fun networking activity. Their assignment was to create a poem or a rap by introducing every member of the group and they had to record it! The outcome was amazing. Curious for the end results? See the video gallery here.

Thursday to Friday – 6 & 7 May 2021

After a well-deserved break on Wednesday from playing The Fresh Connection, the teams went right back to work on Thursday for Round 3. Then on Friday, the day started with the leaderboard announcement where happily many of the teams got back on track. Here are some statistics:

• 32 out of 48 teams did better in Round 3 than in Round 2
• Highest score in Round 3 is 43.31, the team improved by 42.63!
• Highest improvement is 73.93!
• 16 out of 48 teams had a positive ROI in Round 3
• 15 out of 48 teams have a positive weighted ROI after Round 3
• Average ROI increased with 2%

Ranking of Round 3:

To lower the nerves before starting the final round of The Fresh Connection, an interactive quiz was organized by the Inchainge Team. During this networking activity, the craziest life stories of the students were shared, their biggest accomplishments and fun games were played like read my lips, 2 truths & 1 lie, and their favorite from day one, music quiz! What an experience to see so many students networking, engaging, and sharing experiences with each other despite the distance. After this activity, the final round was opened! Exciting!

Saturday – 8 May 2021 – Award Ceremony

The final day has arrived! The Inchainge Team had a special program organized consisting of an interactive product launch and an award ceremony with virtual social drinks. Everyone was eager to seeing the ranking and finding out who the winner was. While the ranking was being announced from rank 48 to rank 1, networking awards were also given out for the favorite created quote, the favorite poem/rap video, etc. But now, let’s cut to the chase!

And the winners are…

After a highly intense week of competition among the top value chain students around the world, we officially have the winners of the Global Student Challenge 2021:

? BAVARIAN SAFTLADEN representing TUMCS University – Weighted Return on Investment: 37.7! ?

2nd Place: Value Creators representing McGill University – Weighted Return on Investment: 36,57

3rd Place: MAXimum Quality representing University of Twente – Weighted Return on Investment: 36,06!

4th Place: 10% representing VILAS (VSCC) – Weighted Return on Investment: 34,86

5th Place: Made in KU representing Korea University – Weighted Return on Investment: 32.22

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WINNERS AND TO ALL OF THE PARTICIPANTS OF THE GSC FINAL 2021!

About the Global Student Challenge

The Global Student Challenge is the #1 SCM Student Competition in the world, which allows students to gain valuable knowledge, further develop their skills, expand their professional network and much more. The Challenge pits teams from top business schools and universities from across the globe against each other in the search for the world’s Top Talent in Value Chain Management. By participating in this Challenge, students experience the life of a Corporate Executive by running their own virtual company together with their team.

Only the top 10% of the teams from curriculum courses get invited to one of the three Global Qualification Rounds (GQR). During these GQRs, teams from around the globe compete against each other for a guaranteed spot in the Global Final.

Learn more about the Global Student Challenge here.

Organized by Windesheim University of applied sciences and Inchainge

For the past 8 years the Global Final Week of the Global Student Challenge has been hosted by Windesheim University of applied sciences and organized in partnership with Inchainge. In previous years the Global Final Week would take place at the Windesheim campus in Zwolle, The Netherlands. This year for the first time Windesheim hosted the event fully online. This time on the Scoocs platform Windesheim and Inchainge were proud to present this year’s Global Finalists. A big thank you to Windesheim for many years of partnership and once again being a gracious host!