Jointly organised by the eBusiness management courses of the Department of Business Administration, Faculty of Commerce of the Hong Kong Shue Yan University (HKSYU) and the Department of Information Systems, College of Business of the City University of Hong Kong (City U), the first-ever Inter-University Project Competition was held successfully on 5 January 2022 in our Lecture Theatre RLB303, and the team from HKSYU won the championship.

Nine top performing BBA teams from both HKSYU BUS 383 and CityU IS2505 were selected from each tutorial to enter this final round. This event gave them a chance to compete like a business competition where they presented their group projects to the senior management of Bauhaus International (Holdings) Limited.

The event is honoured to have the following guests as the panel: Madam Winnie TONG, Co-founder and Chairlady of Bauhaus; Mr. Sunny YEUNG, the CEO of Bauhaus; Dr. Ron KWOK, Director of Alumni Relations Office and Associate Professor of Department of Information Systems, CityU; and Dr. Monica LAW, Head of the Department of Business Administration, HKSYU. The panel had not been informed of each team’s university in advance for a fair and equitable evaluation.

Dr. Joseph KONG and Dr. Yongjin PARK, the course leaders of eBusiness respectively from HKSYU and CityU, pointed out that this course project required each team to analyse two years of fashion sales data provided by Bauhaus, identify the business opportunities and accordingly suggest eBusiness solutions. Dr. KONG explained, “This project requires each team to deliver a 6-minute presentation. Students could understand more about the actual operation and face real people through this completion. More importantly, they could learn from their counterparts from another university.”

The panel chair Madam TONG is also an alumna of HKSYU Journalism. In the interview with Shue Yan Newsletter after the event, she was delighted with the performance of all participating teams. They were well prepared, and the eBusiness solutions proposed were very creative. She pointed out, “During the panel discussion, each panel member held different perspectives when we were deciding the champion and 1st runner-up. There is always a gap between the academic perspective and business operations. I also wish that students can learn and narrow this gap through this competition.” Another panel member Dr. KWOK also commented that HKSYU students excel in rich and practical content, while CityU teams excel in presentation skills.

Finally, Dr. Monica LAW, Head of the Department of Business Administration, thanked Bauhaus for their continuous support to the students and courses of the two universities and believed that the participating teams had benefited a lot from this experience. After the competition, Dr. Lubanski LAM, Associate Head and Assistant Professor of the Department of Business Administration led a campus tour for CityU visitors.

Source: Jan and Feb 2022 Combined Issue