- The name OVAL is based on the philosophy ‘Our Vision for Asian Leadership’ (‘producing East Asia's first global leaders’), and was formed in 2003 when members who met at the Business contest KING hit it off. (For this reason, it is a sister organisation to KING and GEIL, the student organisation that runs the policy-making contest, which was derived from WAAV, Japan's largest student think-tank in the 1990s, and works with them on events and new members.)
Since then, the ‘IBC (International Business Contest for Students)’ has been held in China in 2005, and every year since then, a business contest has been held in one of the three countries. The contest has been held every year in one of the three countries.
- The IBC (International Business Contest for Students) is organised by OVAL JAPAN in cooperation with the organising committees of OVAL CHINA and OVAL KOREA In the IBC, participants are recruited and selected from the three countries, and then teams are formed in groups of three, one from each country . Each team develops a business plan based on a given theme each year.
Examples of themes include ‘Make an online business plan about services or products that seniors specifically can use. Make a business plan using gamification to solve problems in education. In addition to participating in two or three study sessions held before the contest to learn about the steps and cautions in making a business plan from a working professional from a major consultancy, participants are provided with support in advance to attend the Pre IBC, a two-day event where they learn to formulate a business plan in a way that is similar to the real thing.
The project also includes the planning and management of the Staff Exchange Programme (SEP), an annual winter exchange event for the staff of the Executive Committee in each country.