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McKinsey Medium Strategic Decision

Colombian Hippos

#Non-profit
ProHub Comment

This interviewer-led case tests qualitative reasoning and financial analysis in a non-traditional setting. The candidate must evaluate two mutually exclusive options with incomplete information, requiring assumptions about tourist demand and capacity constraints. The case emphasizes that government decisions involve trade-offs beyond pure profitability.

Estimated Time 26 minutes
Difficulty Medium
Source Duke
50 / 100
At the height of his criminal activity in the 1980s, Pablo Escobar imported a menagerie of exotic animals to Colombia to show off at his personal zoo. Since then, many of the animals have escaped and are wreaking havoc on the countryside. Notably, Escobar’s hippos present the highest concern as they are known to attack humans, damage local ecosystems, and have no natural predators to keep their population in check. Experts estimate that the population of 50 escaped hippos will grow to 250 if left unchecked. Your client is the new president of Colombia, who ran a strong-on-hippo campaign and must now deliver results. Her administration has hired your firm to understand the key considerations of the problem and present potential solutions.

Clarifying Information

  1. A strong candidate will want to assess the scope of the damage, the stakeholders affected, and potential solutions/risks.
  2. The government has a deep budget to address the hippo problem. However, the client would still be interested in solutions that are cost-neutral / revenue-generating.
  3. Hippos are dangerous animals who have been known to attack humans. An average hippo eats 88 pounds of vegetation per day and will eat both wild plants and human-grown crops.
  4. Only hippos are in-scope for this case. Disregard other animals.
  5. The rate of hippo population growth is not an important assumption and will not factor into the case.
Mock Interview
Interviewer

At the height of his criminal activity in the 1980s, Pablo Escobar imported a menagerie of exotic animals to Colombia to show off at his personal zoo. Since then, many of the animals have escaped and are wreaking havoc on the countryside. Notably, Escobar’s hippos present the highest concern as they are known to attack humans, damage local ecosystems, and have no natural predators to keep their population in check. Experts estimate that the population of 50 escaped hippos will grow to 250 if left unchecked. Your client is the new president of Colombia, who ran a strong-on-hippo campaign and must now deliver results. Her administration has hired your firm to understand the key considerations of the problem and present potential solutions.

You

Thanks. Before analyzing, I'd like to clarify a few key questions...

Interviewer

Good question. Let me provide some background information...

You

Based on this, I suggest analyzing from these dimensions...

AI Score
Structure Analysis Communication Business Sense Quantitative
Practicing...
Score coming soon
Practice this case with AI Mock Interview

Colombia’s president must decide how to manage 50 escaped hippos from Pablo Escobar’s zoo. Two options: (1) build a domestic sanctuary generating ticket revenue ($500k-$1.5M profit), or (2) lease 30 hippos to Duke University ($1.6M profit but leaves 20 hippos unresolved). The analysis requires financial modeling, risk assessment, and creative problem-solving beyond the numbers.

Key Insights:

  1. Strong candidates identify that Option 2 only accommodates 30 of 50 hippos, creating an incomplete solution and additional unquantified costs
  2. The case tests sensitivity analysis - candidates should calculate both low and high ticket sales scenarios for Option 1 and recognize which assumption drives the recommendation
  3. Non-financial considerations matter for government decisions: local job creation, cultural tourism benefits, and international political optics may outweigh pure financial optimization
  4. This is an interviewer-led framework case where each section stands alone, requiring candidates to be flexible and not force a rigid MECE structure