One day Hartmut Rösch stood in Magdalena Weinle’s office and asked: “Do you speak English?” “Yes, sure.” “Ok, we’re going to Scotland in two weeks!”
That was in 2009 and also a huge surprise. Helen Smith from Dundee Business School heard that a couple of entrepreneurship experts at the Media University were toying with the idea of starting an international business game competition for students. And off they went!
A name had to be found quickly for the competition, which had not even been fully designed yet. European Business Masters Cup, or EBMC for short. Despite all the hurry – or maybe because of it – the first EBMC was a complete success and more and more partners from all over Europe came on board.
Since 2009, the EBMC has been a very popular international student business and ideas competition. Till today, more than 2,000 students from 20 universities in 13 countries have participated.
The EBMC started as a business simulation contest, focusing on entrepreneurial decisions in a simulated, existing company.
In this way, students were given a playful introduction to business administration.
In 2012, the EBMC was revised from the bottom up and was now called “Entrepreneurial Brains on Campus”. The abbreviation EBMC remained, although the content changed considerably. The business game turned into a design thinking competition in which the students generate their own ideas with changing challenges and topics.
Whatever the exact content of each competition round, the EBMC is much more than just business and ideas. It also breathes a truly international spirit. And so, even in the very first final round, the teams that qualified in the national preliminary rounds were put together to form completely new international teams. This will also be done in the future.