Cornell Case Competition for Family Ownership - Cornell Team Selection Application 2025

The Cornell Case Competition for Family Ownership, to be held Feb. 13-14, 2026, at the Cornell Tech Campus in NYC, offers current graduate students a unique opportunity to examine a family enterprise case up close, alongside the family itself.  Based on their performance in the case exercise outlined below, a panel of judges will choose the team that will represent Cornell University in the February competition against teams from other schools. Please note that competitors must be currently enrolled Cornell graduate students, and teams must be final at the time of application. Upon completing this step, you will receive an email confirmation providing additional information about the materials submission process.

Take the collaborative elements of a hackathon, combine the analytical elements of a case competition, add in the best and brightest MBA students in the world, and you have the Cornell Case Competition for Family Ownership. This is the first event of its kind and allows students and family business experts the chance to demonstrate their understanding of the issues critical to family enterprise. This competition will bring together students from leading business schools, select advisors, faculty, and family enterprise leaders to share their challenges first-hand and receive real-time feedback and ideas concerning the future of their enterprise.

The process to select the team representing Cornell is detailed here:

UPDATED SCHEDULE:
October 15: 5 PM deadline for submission of teams (3 students per team).
October 17: 7-day case distributed to all qualifying teams
October 24: 4 PM deadline for team Slide Deck/Executive Summary submission
October 31: The winning team will be announced by the panel of judges

RULES AND SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: 
Each team will submit/upload their materials no later than 4:00 p.m. EDT on October 31.  
No modifications of submitted materials will be permitted after this time.
Submissions should include a Written Executive Summary and a PowerPoint Slide Deck. 

FEEDBACK:
Judges will deliberate AFTER all presentations are submitted.
You will receive written feedback from the Judges with the announcement of the winning team.
Please reach out to Susan Hu at yh789@cornell.edu with any questions.

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