CHASING THE BEANPOT

Ray Kinnunen’s business students have chalked up unprecedented success at a hard-fought academic competition. Now the pressure’s on keeping the streak alive.

By Katy Kramer

“People used to say, ‘We can’t compete with those schools,’” remembers Ray Kinnunen, associate professor of general management and coach of one of the winningest teams at Northeastern.

That was the concern back in 1997, when the Business School Beanpot Case Analysis Competition was born. Kinnunen’s team won that year.

And won three times after that. In fact, ever since the B-School Beanpot’s inception, Kinnunen’s students have been one of the top three finalists, beating teams from Babson, Bentley, Boston University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Suffolk.

“Tell me I can’t do something, and I love it,” Kinnunen says, eyes flashing resolve.

Taking its name from the renowned collegiate ice hockey tournament—and dubbed by insiders the “Northeastern University Invitational,” a nod to NU’s dominance—the Beanpot is an all-day endurance test. Twelve teams—two from each of the six competing schools—have five hours to analyze the same company, formulate a business strategy, and write up their recommendations in a two-page memo.

Then, after lunch, the teams have two hours to craft a convincing ten-minute formal presentation that only four finalists will give to a dozen executive judges, to be followed by a twelve-minute question-and-answer period.

Not only has an NU team always emerged as one of the top three scorers, for the past two years Northeastern has taken both first and second place. As this year’s competition approached, Kinnunen had good reason to be very optimistic about his teams’ chances.


Situation Analysis: The Xs and Os

At 4:45 p.m., on Saturday, February 2, as pundits debate which New England Patriots quarterback should start in the Super Bowl, Emily Buckley and Tameisha Munroe crash out of Room 270 in Dodge Hall, like thoroughbreds out of the starting gate.

Emily whoops into the empty corridor. A cry of liberation. The girls’ high-speed dialogue ricochets down the hall as they move toward the raw air of Huntington Avenue. Later, there will be the debriefing. Right now, rejuvenation.

Just minutes ago, the pair and their three teammates, Alex Khalarian, Mike Lake, and Dan Belcher, were the Executive Task Force, the suits advising the CEO of Mendocino Microbrewing Company on how to handle cash-flow and capacity problems. Now, they’re back to being dungareed undergraduates, adrenaline-infused members of one of the 2002 Northeastern Beanpot teams.

They hurry out of the business administration building, as if speed could guarantee their success, a study in contrasts: Emily, a junior, blond and leggy; Tameisha, a senior, petite and tailored. “It’s like working with your sister,” says Emily, who, with the rest of the team, has been at it since 8:00 a.m. “Good Luck NU Beanpot Case Competition Team,” the banner in the Dodge lobby booms as they sprint under it: “Champions 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001.”

Back upstairs in Room 270, a few remaining members of Five-Star Consulting, the second Northeastern team, huddle after the mock presentations—two rounds of “situation analysis, alternatives, recommendations, implementation, summary”—held in the carpeted amphitheater-like lecture hall.

Ross Kirby and Gilbert Owuor, also newly morphed, hang on advice being offered by some of last year’s winners. Gilbert’s voice carries over the huddle; a junior from Kenya, he spends his summers on a Boston Common stage with the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company. Teammate Ross has a runner’s lean frame and the kind of clean good looks moms like to hold up as an example.

Like former Beanpot members now fluent in business-speak, Gilbert and Ross are learning the clear, unadorned patois, devoid of “like,” “um,” and “ya’ know,” that shapes every sentence into a long pass down the field, straight and purposeful.

This Saturday has been a dry run of the real thing. For the first five hours, students read and analyzed a twenty-six-page case study. At the end of the day, the two teams presented, as if they were finalists.

That last hour proves the toughest. Kinnunen, a quiet, forceful presence, takes the role of moderator in front of an audience of twenty-two staffers and students. A linebacker of a man with a hail-fellow-well-met face and, students say, a secret heart of gold, he introduces the five volunteer faculty judges, then “announces” the finalists. The room quiets.

Tameisha and Emily’s team goes first. Emily manages the blue PowerPoint overheads; her four teammates stand around her, slightly uneasy, hands clasped in front. The team runs through their ten-minute presentation like they’re moving a ball toward the goal, taking handoffs from one another, a bobble here, a misstep there.

For the review and wrap-up, the audience springs into action. Bill Lovely, MBA’97—a former participant in the Dalhousie competition, a graduate version of the Beanpot, and a former Marine helicopter pilot—raises his hand: “What about all the other microbreweries? Have we looked at what they will do to us?”

Ravi Ramamurti, professor of general management, coach of teams for the Dalhousie and the Concordia (another graduate business competition), and one of the professors posing as judges today, asks about a takeover bid.

At 4:15, Ross and Gilbert’s team goes on. Shaun Cullinan begins, then passes the situation analysis off to Sarah Wilson, who laterals to Gilbert (he has so much actorly presence that offstage Ross calls him “Shakespeare”) for a summation of the team’s recommendations—which differ from what the Executive Task Force team just presented. Finally, Gilbert tips it to Mats Steinnes for the wrap-up.

Twice this afternoon, Kinnunen raises his hand when students ramble. Twice, he resets the boxy white egg timer—ten minutes for presentation, twelve for Q&A—that tends to go off mid-sentence. But he makes no public comment about either team’s performance.

Even his College of Business Administration colleagues don’t know what Kinnunen—whom students call Coach K., after the legendary Duke University Blue Devils basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski—says to his teams in private. “What I do behind the scenes is between me and the students, sort of like an unwritten code,” Kinnunen says. But there are glimpses.

“Coach K. pushes the teams and challenges their ideas,” says Catherine Thomason, a member of this year’s Concordia and Dalhousie teams, for whom Kinnunen is a mock judge. “He plays devil’s advocate and fosters a depth of analysis you don’t get from other experiences. Eventually, you learn to second-guess yourself.”

Like other successful coaches, Kinnunen has techniques that are not a matter of public record. His competitiveness is.

“I played a lot of sports, I drag raced, and I like to win,” says Kinnunen, E’69, MBA’71. “Winning’s from my father, who said there was no such thing as ‘can’t.’ ‘If someone else can do it, so can you.’ It’s in my blood.”

In 1974, after receiving a DBA from Louisiana State University, Kinnunen returned to Northeastern to teach and, since 1997, to coach.

“This is why the Steelers lost; this is why the Rams lost,” says Kinnunen the Monday after New England’s unlikely Super Bowl victory. “Ego.” The Patriots’ whole-team entry into the Superdome wasn’t lost on the Beanpot coach. “It doesn’t surprise me at all that [Patriots coach Bill] Belichick did that,” says Kinnunen. “He’s been building the team all year.”

So has Kinnunen. He began crafting his two teams months ago. Like Belichick, he’s a master team-builder. “The students I pick have to be bright, have the right attitude, be team players, have persistence, and leave their egos at the door,” he says.

There’s no lack of talent. “I make the final selection out of three hundred top juniors and seniors,” says Kinnunen. “I select ten.” Recommended by professors, administrators, co-op mentors, and peers, Kinnunen’s final picks are born of study, interview, and alchemy. “I’ve turned down many qualified people. It’s not scientific. In the final analysis, it’s my gut,” he says. His wild card.

Today—Monday, February 4, nineteen days away from the competition—as Boston recovers from its Super Bowl hangover, both Beanpot teams will practice again, the front half of another eight-hour mock session. They’ll finish on Friday. Do it again the next three Mondays and Fridays. And Saturdays, all day.

“Let’s be confident; let’s not be arrogant,” Coach K. says. He has already strategically distributed an armload of aphorisms from such sources as Vince Lombardi, the Bible, and Colin Powell. Today, he gives the students “Casey at the Bat,” the fabled thirteen-verse poem about a baseball superstar who strikes out in the ninth with two outs and two on. It’s a lesson in humility.

The teams also have to discuss some new competition rules—a lesson in flexibility. “They’re raising the bar,” says Kinnunen. “[Competition officials] told us Saturday about a change in format. You still have five hours to write a response and hand it in. The new twist is that a company executive will come and speak. Then the team can Q and A him.

“Actually, it’s a way to dethrone us. I welcome it. It’s about time we had some competition,” he says.

The surprise of the new rules is enough to make the teams uneasy. Kinnunen’s practices are formulaic, and the new rules aren’t part of the formula yet. But Coach K. is confident, calm. “We’ve trained. They’ve decided to extend the field by twenty yards. No big deal.”


Alternatives: Team-Building

Kinnunen not only recruits Beanpot team members, he recruits specialty coaches—from the business administration faculty, from the Dalhousie and Concordia teams, from the ranks of Beanpot alumni—to help with tactics, skills, and strategy.

“A good team has a diversity across majors,” former Beanpot competitor Matt McLaughlin, BA’00, now an account manager at GE Lighting, says. “Our team had two finance students, one accounting, one marketing, and one management information systems, so each person could zero in on an area of expertise.”

As well as covering the academic bases, Coach K. tries to create a team that will bond. “He picks the teams so there’s a synergy,” says Rudy Morando, BA’01, an associate with Rex Capital in Rhode Island, who competed on both the 2000 and the 2001 teams. Team members soon learn that differences should not only be accepted, they should be valued.

Some learn this especially well. Sean Novak and Laura Edson—both BA’01, both members of the 2001 Beanpot team—are engaged. “Coach K. connects people with complementing qualities, and similar core beliefs and drive,” says Novak, who works at Gillette. “And when you do that, there’re bound to be feelings between people.”

Edson and Novak, who had neither co-ops nor classes in common until their Beanpot experience, delayed dating until the competition was over. “We never acted on [our feelings], until afterward,” says Novak. “It was tough, but it was worth it. It would have been a risk for the team if it hadn’t worked out.” Their teammates will be in the wedding party in June. So will Coach K.

Kinnunen prefers potential connections to ready-made ones. “If I knew people were real chummy in the beginning, I wouldn’t choose them,” he says. Yet, says Novak, as soon as Coach K. puts a team together, he launches it into an eight-week practice marathon, which puts members in constant communication with one another, and for which each receives four academic credits. “It’s high pressure and a lot of work, and I wouldn’t be surprised if other teammates got married,” Novak says.

“You learn by trial and error until the team figures out something that works for them,” says Edson, who works at the Bose Corporation, and was one of the few Beanpot participants to have a concentration in human resources management. “It’s hard because we’re all Type A personalities. We’re proactive, used to being the leader.”

“At the first practice,” says Morando, “everyone just blabbed about their achievements.”

But, eventually, teams pull together and optimize their collective assets. “Three people on the team may want to do three different things,” says McLaughlin. “The team has to decide which option has more pros than cons. This way, when you’re asked the tough questions at the competition, the alternatives are on the table. You can tell the judges what you considered but didn’t choose, and here’s why.”


Recommendations and Implementation: Game Day

It’s 2:15 p.m., Saturday, Febru-ary 23. Outside, the day mimics spring. Runners and cyclists cover the banks of the Charles.

But inside the marbled first-floor atrium of Boston University’s School of Management, sixty students dressed in black-suit variations stand quietly, having just reassembled after lunch at Pizzeria Uno, a Beanpot corporate sponsor.

As these teams from Babson, Bentley, BU, MIT, Northeastern, and Suffolk wait to be escorted to their respective rooms to develop their ten-minute oral presentations, the judges are reading the two-page memos—situation analysis, alternatives, recommendations, implementation, and summary—that each group began writing at 7:30 a.m., and turned in at 1:00.

After two hours of working out what they’ll say, the twelve Beanpot teams file into the SMG auditorium to hear the code numbers of the four anonymous teams who will actually make a presentation to the twelve judges seated in the front row of the 266-seat hall. The other eight teams: sidelined.

By now, friends, roommates, parents, and faculty have made their way into the auditorium, and the calm professionalism that clings to Beanpot teams like jerseys gives way to unabashed cheering and catcalls.

After the obligatory introductions and thank-yous before the politely impatient crowd, the numbers of the four finalists are announced: 3, 5, 6, and 11. Ross and Gilbert’s team, number 1, is eliminated. Emily and Tameisha’s team, number 6, is a finalist, and will be the first to present.

They stride confidently down the aisle to the podium. Tameisha kicks off, introducing the team and painting the picture under consideration: The Greater Boston Food Bank has had difficulties after switching from a shopping to a preorder distribution system.

Emily, behind the podium, synchronizes the bright-blue overheads on a screen that takes up most of the stage. Mike, a tall senior who did a co-op at the White House, moves the team deftly through the alternatives.

He hands off to Dan, who talks to the audience with the easy familiarity of a sportscaster, explaining a volunteer retention program, an alternative layout for the facility, a new business development manager. From time to time, after Emily displays an overhead filled with an array of figures any IRS man would love, bespectacled Alex steps forward to shed light on this or that column.

There are no embarrassing pauses, no stumbling over words, no mismatched overheads, no hint these twenty-two minutes took months to perfect, no break in the flow down the field toward the goal posts.


Summary: Postgame Analysis

It is a silver instead of a gold. MIT gets the big prize.

The entire Northeastern group wastes no time heading en masse down to Uno’s. Later, much later, the conversation begins to turn—from shock, disappointment, and disbelief, to quarterbacking.

They conjure up a whole host of reasons for not winning. The discussion centers on the kind of case they were given, the fact that the Boston Food Bank is a nonprofit organization, a departure from the for-profit corporations the teams were used to analyzing. Laura Edson says nonprofits give judges more latitude in scoring.

Coach K. moves from Dan, to Laura, to Gilbert, and back around the group again. Emotions move with him, from whipsawed, to philosophical, to practical. “What’s the cure for Beanpot withdrawal?” asks Mike Lake.

“I’m going to miss my team and my early-morning Saturdays,” says Sarah Wilson.

“I want to do it again,” says Emily. “I want to beat the pants off MIT!” Because they were finalists, Emily and Tameisha’s team will get official feedback from the judges. Gilbert and Ross’s won’t.

On Monday, Coach K. will tell them, “No one should feel anything but good. We got a meatball—a slow one down the middle—and we still hit it better than anyone else. You went above and beyond. In the real world, you get rewarded for that.” He will also say that these ten were the best-prepared students he’s ever seen. After all, they managed to do it again—take second place and hit the top three for the sixth year in a row.

Kinnunen’s appreciation for the big picture is echoed by the old-timers. “Beanpot is a fantastic opportunity to learn about many industries in a short period of time,” says former track-team captain Rudy Morando. “It’s the most intense eight weeks I’ve ever been through—sports, academics, anything—and Coach K. is one of the best coaches I ever had.”

“By far, it was the best experience of my five years at school,” says Matt McLaughlin.

Edson says, “The work I’m doing now is of a much higher quality because of Beanpot. At the time, I didn’t realize how much it would help me professionally.”

As Saturday draws to a close, Coach K. puts the day in perspective. “My team gave a great presentation. They were very professional. They did everything I wanted them to do. It just wasn’t our day.”

And so it ends. The room is quieter; the teams are regrouping, coaches with players, students concentrating in marketing with those expert in finance, old hands with new recruits.

They call to one another, pull the tables closer, reminisce, commiserate. They order pizza. They laugh at old jokes. They settle in. “Being together . . . ,” Coach K. says. “We’re family.”

Katy Kramer, MA’00, wrote about the history and the business applications of the game Go in the January issue. A freelance writer who lives in Epping, New Hampshire, she writes this magazine’s “Husky Tracks.”