Winners announced: The 2021 Small Business School Challenge

Another year, another Small Business School Challenge success!

This past April, hundreds of MBA students were paired with small businesses to provide strategies and actionable recommendations to boost their business.

Over the course of 48 hours, the teams developed innovative approaches, identified opportunities and areas for improvement, conducted detailed research and planning, and networked with other businesses and industry leaders.

Real business improvement, thanks to the SBSC

The Small Business School Challenge is a lot more than just a networking event between business owners and MBA candidates. In fact, we’ve seen lasting benefits for those businesses who participated in previous years:

68% of the small businesses implemented the proposals that their MBA teams made
47% of them saw business improve by more than 20%
43% of them were able to rehire staff they had to lay off at the beginning of the pandemic

Congratulations to this year’s SBSC winners

Taking the top 3 spots on the national stage were:

National first place: The MBA team from Carnegie Mellon University, Heinz College – Emily Skopov, Ruchita Dunung, and Gisselt Gomez representing their business client Bagelati
National second place: The MBA team from UC Berkeley, Haas School of Business – Drew Schneider, Deudutta Negori, and Varun Tyagi representing their business client BookBuyers
National third place: The MBA team from Washington University in St.Louis, Olin School of Business – Arajit Samanta, Scott Horan, and Michael Weaver representing their business client Ted Rhodes Foundation