MIT Sails Home With Top Prize At Bocconi’s 2015 Rolex MBA Regatta. 400+ Students from 70 Countries Compete.

19 boat crews from schools including Harvard, HEC, London Business School, MIT & INSEAD gathered from 25th to 27th September in Santa Margherita, Italy, for the regatta (series of boat races) organized by SDA Bocconi, Spain along with Yacht Club Italiano and Rolex.

From the 25th to the 27th of September MBA students from the world’s leading business schools – including Harvard, MIT, HEC, IESE and London Business School challenged each other in the waters of Santa Margherita, on the Mediterranean coast, in occasion of the 2015 Rolex MBA’s Conference & Regatta, an event organized by the Sailing Club of SDA Bocconi School of Management and Yacht Club Italiano in partnership with Rolex.

Around 400 MBA students and alumni participated in this 11th edition of the regatta – for three days of sailing, networking, debate and social events. Apart from the sailing, for the students the event also represented a chance to network and to experience how to manage and work within a team – while for the MBA students of the SDA Bocconi Sailing Club it was the result of months of hands-on experience in organizing all aspects of such an event.

Glimpses From The 2014 Edition of The Regatta

The calendar was full of events and a conference on the theme: In search of equilibrium. Standing against the winds of an unpredictable environment, offerd participants the opportunity to listen to two prominent speakers: Clemens Hellsberg, who was director general and chairman of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and Marie Johns, who was president and CEO of Verizon Washington and he served as deputy administrator in the US Small Business Administration (SBA) in the United States.

Large sporting events provide great networking opportunities for students and have become regular features at many B-Schools. Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business in the US launched the MBA World Cup Rugby, the 35th edition took place in April 2015 and involved 30 teams from 15 business schools. With more than 800 players present for two days, the event provided the students an excellent chance to build connections around the world over a matter of days. Similarly, Tuck School of Business recently hosted the 32nd MBA Soccer World Cup as part of which sixteen teams from 10 different schools fought for the Cup. 

In Europe the MBA Tournament at HEC Paris, has been running for the past 25 years on the French school’s campus in Jouy-en-Josas. This event has often been called is the Olympics of the MBA world – more than 1,500 competitors from 16 schools competed in about 20 sports in May 2015.

The participating schools at Bocconi’s Regatta this year included:

1. SDA Bocconi School of Management
2. Harvard Business School
3. London Business School
4. Wharton
5. INSEAD
6. Columbia Business School
7. Iese Business School
8. MIT Sloan School of Management
9. Chicago Booth School of Business
10. IE Business School
11. Hong Kong University of Science & Technology Business School
12. HEC Paris
13. IMD
14. The Fuqua School of Business
15. Tuck School of Business
16. Manchester Business School
17. Goethe Business School
18. Rotterdam School of Management
19. Sauder School of Business