Cultivating a Win at UC Davis Food & Ag Business Challenge

UC Davis Graduate School of Management recently hosted its Food & Ag Business Challenge, which brought together teams from multiple universities to make recommendations on a case study for HM.CLAUSE, a global seed company.

My team’s journey through the competition was like cultivating a successful crop from seed to harvest.

The Business Challenge

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Late on a Friday afternoon, we were thrust into the heart of HM.CLAUSE’s real-world business challenge: reimagining its Life Sciences Innovation Center (LSIC) to become a more valuable asset to its business.

 Armed with a 30-page dossier detailing HM.CLAUSE's business and competition in the global seed market, we were eager to dive into a night of brainstorming and strategizing…but first, we had to have dinner!

At dinner with fellow student teams from UC Davis, UC Berkeley, and UC Riverside, faculty, and competition judges, we learned more about HM.CLAUSE during a keynote speech from Vincent Asiago, director of R&D Portfolio and Innovation. We didn’t know it until later in the night, but a simple question about the Life Science Innovation Center's financial return during Vincent’s keynote Q&A session gave us the hook we needed to frame the problem.

Planting the Seeds: Strength in Diversity

One of my team’s greatest strengths was the diversity of our backgrounds, and we have Lecturer Julie Morris’ Food & Ag Industry Immersion experience to thank for bringing us together. The Immersion courses have been some of my favorites so far and were instrumental in preparing us for the competition.

My classmate Min Zhu and I took both the Food & Ag Pre-Immersion Field Study and Immersion courses together in the fall and winter, and we realized our different backgrounds would make a great team. Min has a background in food science and is focusing her Full-Time MBA program studies on finance. I have a background in consumer insights and food trends and am focusing my Online MBA studies on product management and marketing.

Our third teammate was Marie Klein, a UC Davis Ph.D. candidate in the Horticulture and Agronomy Graduate Group of the Department of Plant Sciences. Min had met Marie at the ASTA seed conference in Monterey. Marie rounded out our team with knowledge of both science and the world of plant breeding.

Nurturing Growth: From Ideation to Presentation

After dinner, we got to work on our case. Proposals were due by 7:30 a.m. the next morning, so we had to make the most of our time—less than 12 hours if we wanted to sleep!

We spent the first part of the night brainstorming. What was the problem? What aspects of this center were important to maintain? What could we reinvent from the ground up? What structure of the center would create the most value for HM.CLAUSE?

This brainstorming session gave us the space to think creatively and planted the seeds (pun intended) for our final idea. This is where Vincent’s comment came in--it was the perfect anecdote to set up the business problem!

The clock kept ticking so we divided and conquered.

We had a general structure of how we wanted to present: what was the problem, what is our solution, and what were the components of the solution.

I built out our introduction and conclusion. Marie detailed our plan for an academic partnership with HM.CLAUSE and UC Davis. Min crunched numbers and laid out our venture capital strategy. Slowly but surely, our presentation came together.

Beyond applying our education to a business problem, the competition was a challenge of collaboration, time management, and mindset.

 These three things helped us bring our plan from ideation to presentation:

1.      Embrace Different Perspectives: Our diverse backgrounds were our greatest strength. Marie, Min, and I each brought a different perspective to the table, which helped us be more creative, and lean on each other to drill down into areas of expertise.

2.      Trust Your Gut: Building a new business plan is an ambiguous challenge. Instead of second-guessing if what we came up with was what the judges were looking for, we focused on our unique perspective and creative solutions. This helped us be confident in our proposal.

3.      Enjoy the Ride: Working for hours straight, we needed to find a way to stay motivated. Embracing the competition as an exciting opportunity to contribute to meaningful change in the food industry fueled our determination throughout the night. It helped us enjoy the moment and even have fun with it!

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Presenting the Fruits of our Labor to Industry Leaders

Saturday morning was a blend of anticipation and excitement as it was time to present to the judges. For the first round, we shared our plan with judges from E. & J. Gallo Winery, venture fund The March Group, Mezzetta, and HM.CLAUSE. For the second and final round, we, along with the other two finalist teams, presented in front of executives from HM.CLAUSE.

Making it to the final round and winning first place was a happy surprise. 

It was rewarding to receive the judges' recognition for our team's unity and our ability to apply our education to real-world situations. That’s why we’re here in the first place!

Reflections on the Experience

The UC Davis Food & Ag Business Challenge is one of the most engaging and rewarding experiences of my MBA journey so far. My MBA has given me some incredible seeds, including my business education and a dream team. The competition created an opportunity to nurture them and see the fruits of our labor.

It was a wonderful opportunity to draw on learnings from the Food & Agriculture Industry Immersion. I met and collaborated with smart, interesting students, talked with food industry executives, and took a deep dive into an engaging business problem! I want to thank my teammates, UC Davis, HM.CLAUSE and all the judges for making this experience happen!