Mitchell MBA student Jonathan Daigle races to the top

With a little good luck and an attribution to South Alabama, 2008 graduate Jonathan Daigle finished at the top of a worldwide simulation business competition where he presented an athletic footwear business at high quality and low costs. Graduating with a master's degree in Business Administration from the Mitchell College of Business under his belt, Daigle finished at the top of the competition known as the Business Strategy Game Invitational. After Daigle's graduation from USA in May 2008, he went on to place first in his division of 12 competing footwear firms. The Business Strategy Game simulation, used at more than 600 universities in the United States and internationally, is an online exercise that prompts players with the task of running an athletic footwear company in head-to-head competitions. It specifically allows students from many schools to run an athletic footwear company against other competitors. Teams must first win at competitions in their perspective schools to get to the invitational. Daigle and his team were asked to devise a respected brand image that would keep their shoe company high in the profits as well as stable in the category of financial performance. According to the USA Press Office, teams mapped out and wrote a strategy to create this image, and Daigle and his competitors made decisions in more than 50 functional and operating areas during each of the 10 rounds of the simulation. Many of the teams at the competition sought out methods to bump up sales with lower pricing, more selection, better quality, endorsements and even smaller scale advances such as mail-in rebates and shorter shipping and handling. Daigle's strategies proved to be not only efficient but profitable enough to bring him to the top of the game. "There were two things about my strategy that were different from the other teams," Daigle said. "First, I concentrated on a high quality niche while everyone else seemed to be focused on volume-driven sales. Typically, a high quality niche means high costs, but I made only 50 different styles of shoes compared with 150 or 250 of the other teams. Consequently, I had the lowest cost out of all the teams in my industry." Daigle also followed the direction of some real-world businesses by selling his North American plant and operating his main plant out of Asia and a smaller one in South America to lower costs in the simulation. A total of 316 teams accepted the invitation to compete in the game. The teams were then divided into 27 industries with a maximum of 12 teams per industry. Daigle competed against winners from prominent schools across the United States, Europe and Asia and finished the simulation with one of the top 10 scores achieved by all 27 division winners. He attributes the Mitchell MBA courses that affected him during his four years at USA. "I was both excited and hesitant after the first round," Daigle said. "I had the highest score not only in my industry, but overall as well. However, I remembered from playing the game in Dr. Gamble's class that the last placed team after round one could eventually win the whole thing because that's what my team did. However, as each round progressed, it became more definite I would hold on to win my industry." The project first came about in Dr. John Gamble's Strategic Management class at the University itself. "The coursework in the Mitchell MBA program is designed to sharpen our students' abilities to think strategically and to weigh things from the perspective of the total enterprise operating in an increasingly global market environment," Gamble said. "The combination of recruiting exceptional students like Jonathan and exposing them to the rigors of business and competitive analysis positions our students to perform well in a competition like the Business Strategy Game Invitational." To some surprise, Daigle received his undergraduate degree from USA in biology rather than business in 2006. "When I graduated undergrad, I was undecided about exactly what I wanted to do for a career," Daigle said. "I decided the MBA would help me the most because it could be used with any career choice." Daigle helps show an example of the diverse backgrounds among Mitchell MBA students and many other students at USA who are learning to become more versatile and successful at competitions outside the classroom. "Dr. Gamble's Business Policy and Strategy course along with the other MBA courses were key to my success," Daigle said. "I took the principles from my coursework and applied them throughout the Invitational. In my opinion, USA offers one of the top places to earn a MBA."