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The Peak Time is an international student business competition organized every year by the students of the Stockholm school of Economics in Riga. Currently, it is one of the biggest international events held in the Baltic States, attracting attention from about around 2000 students from 70 countries, i.e., USA, Germany, UK, Brazil, Canada, Singapore, Sweden, China, Italy, and others. Over 16 years, thousands of students have applied and competed against each other, to win prizes and gain experience. Participants of the competition are tested in their analytic and decision making skills in an online business simulation provided by CESIM, but their ability to provide creative solutions for real life business problems is challenged in case studies prepared by consultancy companies. Teams and individuals which break to the finals in Riga not only compete for main prizes, but also have an opportunity to listen to world famous speakers and attend social and networking events.
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History
Peak Time has originated in year 1999, where it was first organized at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, exclusively by the students themselves. The initial aim of the competition was “to find the most talented and passionate students from the Baltic States, involve top companies that were looking for high-performing employees and establish an annual meeting platform – Peak Time”. As time passed by, it started to become more and more international, and now it gathers around 1.5 thousand participants from around 70 countries around the world. The motto of Peak Time is BE THE ONE WHO SHAPES TOMORROW OF BUSINESS.
Stages of the competition
Participants register as a team of four people or as an individual, when the registration for the competition is opened. After the participants have registered and sent in their applications, the preliminary online round of the competition starts.
The first stage is playing in a business simulation, provided by the Finnish company CESIM. In the business simulation participants have to operate a production company in a competitive market and play against other teams in the assigned group. The goal of the simulation is to gain the biggest share of the market. After the simulation round, the results are summed up, and top 100 teams and top 100 individuals are invited to the next round of the competition.
The next round of the competition is solving a case study. Case study is usually a challenging task - teams and individuals are provided with raw data and other relevant information about a company, market, country etc. and they have to provide both numerical and creative analysis for the given tasks. For example: how to cut on costs, without making the customer suffer from that.After the case study solutions are evaluated, 16 teams (64 people) and 16 individuals (16 people) are invited to come to the final stage which is held in Riga. If a person is invited as an individual, he or she is randomly given a team (to form 4 teams of 4 individual participants in each team) whereas those who come as teams continue to participate together.
The finals in Riga have three stages: the first day is CESIM simulations, where the participants once again have to play a more complex yet faster version of the CESIM simulation. The next day they are given a case study, which they once again have to solve and present this time live to jury members. After the two stages are finished, the results are summed up and the top 5 teams are selected, who will have to prove their worthiness once more - they will receive another case study which they will then have to solve and present during only a couple of hours. Afterwards, the teams are ranked once again by the same jury members, and the winners of Peak Time are finally chosen.
Final event
The final event is not only about a tough competition. It's also a good time to meet new friends and acquaintances. Throughout the three days, the participants have special evening programmes: team building activities in the city, led by our student compadres, Cultural and National evenings, where the participants share something that they brought from their countries, or experience what Latvian culture has to offer. And of course a party. It is held on the day the top 5 is selected - during the party the winners are announced and leave to prepare for the next day, whereas the other finalists party SSE Riga style.