Feature

Battle of the Minds

A cracking final awaits

Mohammad Isam & Quazi Zulquarnain Islam

SOME made it with a bang while the rest had their fingers crossed when the results were being read out. But in the end, the deserved seven progressed to the final of the Battle of Minds competition.

North South University (NSU), Independent University of Bangladesh (IUB), East West University (EWU), BRAC University (BU), Dhaka University (DU) Management and Marketing and Khulna University (KU) will now battle it out to become the champions.

The semifinals, contested at the plush Hotel Sarina in Banani on December 29, were fought out between 14 groups of bright and skilful students from twelve different universities, both public and private. While only 6 teams were supposed to progress to the final, the competition was so fierce, that there was a tie and finally seven teams made it through.

For a poor and often neglected country struggling with economic and social troubles, Bangladesh is lucky to have a generation of youngsters who are ready to brainstorm and bring out the best in themselves in order to protect, improve, transform and in the end, give Bangladesh a solid future.

Back to the competition in hand and the moment one entered the well-lit room, it had the whiff of battle and yes, a battle of minds.

NSU, aptly dubbed Group A, gave an A grade presentation.

Their group leader nicknamed Captain Tikli managed to look the part of a flight captain and a voice of the aviation sector while his team mate was clad in a Endi Punjabi, suited for an economist providing views. Their presentation had great depth and they must have done extensive research because they made it look quite easy. This was most evident during the question and answer session where they charmed the panel of judges with their wit and humour.

The esteemed judge panel consisting of Mr. Imtiaz Faruque, Head of Human Resources (HR) British American Tobacco (BAT), Cambodia; Mr. Q. M. Shahed, Head of HR, BAT, Bangladesh and Mr. Ashraf Kaiser, renown journalist and CEO Benchmark; had their work cut out from the onset as the quietly confident BRAC University team gave a good account of themselves and their case creating Bangladesh's first global consumer brand. They had little glitches and were fine with whatever that was asked of them.

Some of the topics were not as easy to research or even present but one was impressed by the amount of effort put in by all the contesting teams. Considering that the contestants received the cases on the 19th of December leaving them only 10 days to get themselves ready!

One angle of impressing the judges was creating an entrée with video clippings. For the Dhaka University Management team, that worked wonders. Their case justification, that Bangladesh can have more skilled labour going abroad, was difficult to comprehend at first but as said earlier, the country is lucky to have a generation of thinkers and the management department team were quite good in their later explanations.

The mood in the fourth floor of Sarina was easing up with certain candid moments but none captured the audience than the guy from Islamic University of Technology team who asked everyone present if they had watched An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore. There were merely three who saw it and the participant from Gazipur was surprised. He had a case too: he was presenting on the effective disaster management in the coastal areas of Bangladesh and wanted some crowd participation.

Other teams who put on shows worthy of mention are IUB who did a quite effective interview and action session on stage to showcase the way to establish an effective supply chain to control spiralling prices of essentials.

Khulna University also did themselves proud managing to keep the audience engaged with a presentation that showcased how to revive the shrimp industry in Khulna.

A number of faculties from each of the universities were present to inspire and cheer the teams. The energy level was electric through out the day. Even a hearty and sumptuous lunch break did not pull it down and the afternoon session was as energetic as the morning one.

Almost all the participants did themselves proud working meticulously throughout the Eid holidays to prepare for their presentations. Some may consider themselves unlucky to miss out but they will doubtless be inspired by having participated in such an intellectually invigorating session.

We wish them the best of the luck.

As for the ones still battling it out, its back to more work and planning and presentations and most of all -- competition.