UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. –– A case competition held in conjunction with the second annual Dan and Robyn Ives AI Innovation Day at Penn State’s Smeal College of Business highlighted a significant shift in how students are engaging with artificial intelligence (AI), moving beyond ideas to building real, working solutions.
As part of the daylong event, which brought together more than 1,000 students, faculty, staff and industry leaders, the Dan and Robyn Ives AI Innovation Day Case Competition challenged teams to apply artificial intelligence in a real-world business context. This year marked a notable evolution from 2025, when teams focused primarily on pitching concepts. In 2026, students were required to develop functional prototypes.
“The leap we saw this year was remarkable,” said Renee Ford, senior instructional designer in Smeal’s eLearning Design and Innovation Group (eLDIG). “Students aren’t just thinking about AI anymore. They’re building with it, testing it and applying real business judgment.”
The competition, facilitated by Ford and eLDIG Director Kitt Camplese, featured a case developed by Raymond Kusch, founder and CEO of American Inference and a Smeal executive doctorate of business administration student. American Inference is an AI consulting firm aimed at democratizing AI by making it accessible and actionable for businesses through tailored, end-to-end services.
The case challenged students to consider how companies can sustain competitive advantage in a landscape where AI tools are widely accessible and was inspired by one of Gartner’s Executive Case Insights, which they made available to Smeal for the case competition.
Finalists were asked not only to develop a strategic recommendation, but also to demonstrate it through a working prototype. This reflects the growing expectation that graduates can apply AI in practical, decision-making contexts.
Ford noted that much of this growth is being driven by a combination of self-directed learning, peer collaboration, and increased access to tools.
“Students are experimenting with AI outside the classroom and bringing that knowledge into their teams,” she said. “Access to platforms like BoodleBox — a collaborative AI platform designed for education and workplace productivity that Smeal provides to students, staff and faculty — has lowered the barrier to entry, allowing them to move quickly from idea to execution. What’s especially exciting is that the momentum is being driven by student curiosity and initiative.”
The 2026 Ives AI Innovation Day Case Competition challenged students to tackle a defining question in today’s business landscape: how to build and sustain competitive advantage when artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming accessible to everyone.
Centered on a startup facing pressure from tools like ChatGPT and shifting market dynamics, the case pushed students to move beyond viewing AI as the advantage itself and instead focus on strategy, execution and value creation. Unlike last year, finalists were required not only to develop a strategic recommendation but also to build a working prototype, reflecting a broader shift from conceptual thinking to real-world application in an AI-driven economy.
The case was named "Draftly: Building Competitive Advantage in the Age of AI Disruption," adapted from a Gartner Case Insights Case. The case centers on Draftly, a hypothetical AI-native SaaS startup founded by three Penn State alumni whose product helps small and mid-size professional services firms generate client proposals 10 times faster using AI.
Set against the backdrop of the “SaaSpocalypse” — a $285 billion wipeout in global software stocks triggered by AI threatening traditional software business models — teams were asked to address the central question: How do you build and maintain competitive advantage when the technology powering your product is rapidly becoming a commodity?
Complicating factors included a co-founder pushing for a risky pivot to agentic AI, customers experimenting with free alternatives like ChatGPT and a skeptical angel investor questioning whether Draftly is “just a feature that OpenAI ships next quarter.” Teams were to advise the founders on how to use AI — within their product and across their operations — to build durable competitive advantage in a market that may be reinventing itself in real time.
A total of 23 student teams registered. Each team was required to include at least one Smeal student. Five finalist teams presented to a panel of judges, which included:
- Daniel Ives from Wedbush Securities
- David Steinberg from Zeta Global
- Carolyn Mulhern from Palantir
- France Hoang from BoodleBox
- Raymond Kusch from American Inference
- Tawnya Means from Inspire HigherEd and AdvancAI
- Corey Phelps, John and Karen Arnold Dean of Smeal
The winning team, CERR Consulting, included:
- Christopher Ji, a first-year intended finance and supply chain and information systems major
- Eric He, a fourth-year cybersecurity major
- Robert Dewey, a third-year biomedical engineering major and entrepreneurship and innovation minor
- Robert Pitsko, a fourth-year computer science and applied statistics dual major who is minoring in entrepreneurship and innovation
CERR Consulting proposed a product pivot to Sourcery, an AI-powered customer acquisition system. Sourcery would automate the entire process of finding and reaching new clients, from identifying ideal prospects, to conducting deep, timely research, to drafting personalized outbound and finally creating the business proposal.
“What Smeal changed for us wasn’t just what we learned, but it was how we think," Ji said. "Before this case competition, it was easy to look at a case and focus on what sounds like a good idea. But classes like ACCTG 211: Financial and Managerial Accounting for Decision Making and MGMT 301: Basic Management Concepts force you to slow down and ask a different question: Does this actually work in the real world?"
That shift mattered a lot in this case, Ji explained.
"We weren’t just trying to make Draftly better on paper," Ji said. "We were constantly checking if the numbers made sense, if the company could actually afford the pivot and if the model would hold once you factor in things like churn, costs and execution. And that’s how we came up with Sourcery. For me, that’s what Smeal really builds: Not just students who can come up with ideas, but people who know how to pressure test them and make sure they hold up when it actually matters.”
That mindset permeated the competition and was reinforced through cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Dewey indicated that combining his course work in the College of Engineering with his teammates’ framework from Smeal enabled the team to devise a winning solution.
“Through the technical and business frameworks of ENGR 310: Entrepreneurial Leadership and ENGR 411: Business Fundamentals for Engineers, we utilized a cross-disciplinary toolkit to drive the team’s success,” he said. “Furthermore, the financial modeling and strategic thinking developed in these courses were leveraged to construct 30-month projections and a $500,000 funding rationale.”
Parcella, a team of two finance majors –– fourth-year Liam Buckley and third-year Tejas Gatehouse –– placed second.
Team Trio Valley, which included third-year accounting master’s student Gongming Xu and Leo Lu, a third-year computer science major, placed third.
The case competition was part of a broader AI Innovation Day experience that included keynote speakers, discipline-specific student sessions and an AI showcase featuring faculty, staff and student projects. Together, the event reflects Smeal’s ongoing efforts to integrate AI across the curriculum and prepare students for a rapidly evolving business landscape.