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How have case studies evolved over the years? 

The case itself, not too much, because the key ingredients of a good case are as they were 100 years ago. It’s more the format that the case is taking. So, whether it’s in video form, a simulation, multimedia, comic book cases, you still need the same ingredients, which is having a protagonist in the case. We focus on teaching cases so there has to be a decision point, there’s a challenge, uncertain outcomes happening within the case. They’re short stories ultimately where the protagonist is facing that dilemma and it outlines that in the opening paragraph of a traditional paper case and then the story unfolds and then there’s no ending to the case. That’s when it’s left with the students to then be like, right, OK, what do we do next? What happens next? And then that discussion happens. So, those ingredients should be in any case that are in real-world stories coming into the classroom in whatever format that takes. And then all of those skills still come out in the development of students. 

Are B-schools interested in looking at cases from across the world? 

Yes, depending on what the school’s own strategy is. Many of them collaborate with other institutions across the world or within the same region. We have some cases that are co-written by faculty at different schools. Within the collection, we need to make sure we still have local cases written by local authors for local students so that students can relate to those companies, they can see themselves being the protagonist in the case. But they also want to know how business is done in other parts of the world. So, part of our role at The Case Centre is to make sure we have that internationally diverse collection of cases so that students can have that local case, but then also learn how that applies in another part of the world. That variety is key. So, many business schools are encouraging their authors to write local cases, which again is developing their relationships with local businesses.

Does The Case Centre facilitate this kind of relationship? 

Yeah, it naturally happens because part of our role is to bring the case community together and we do that in various ways. One of the things that we created is called World Case Teaching Day and that happens on the first Wednesday in February every year. And that’s the day we create for the case method community so that business schools can use that platform and share what they’re doing within their school around the case method. And that’s another way where schools see what other schools are doing and then they’ll connect that way. We also have an online case forum every year, where again that’s a platform where we bring the case community together and different presenters come from different schools to talk about the initiatives, what they’re up to at their school, how they’re getting their students involved, different innovations they’re working on, best practices. So in various ways we bring that community together; basically we’re that hub and making sure that network happens within those schools.

How many cases do you award as best-in-class every year?

So, we have nine main subject disciplines for which we have an award in each year. And an overall winner as well. And then we have our case competitions where we have six cases competing. Two of those receive nominations and the other four are case competitions where cases are submitted. For the case competitions we have a panel. The actual case awards are based on adoptions. There’s actually no judging involved, it’s how many schools have adopted that case. And then we look at the most number of adoptions a case has had and do the awards.

How many cases do you receive every year from around the world? 

From around the world, probably about 6,000 cases a year. And they’re from business schools that perhaps have a case research centre themselves to help support their faculty write the cases. We also have some independent authors who have written a case and just want to share that with the case community. They can also submit their case to us and we give them that global platform as well. So it doesn’t even have to be a school that has the resources to have a whole centre themselves, we can still support that faculty member, share that work, and for them to have further impact with what they do. 

Which are the top business schools that bag these awards?

In the impact index that we list, Harvard is number one; it’s no surprise. Then we have INSEAD from France and IBS Case Research Centre is ranked number three at the moment.

Do corporates interact a lot with you for to perhaps get a case written on them?

So that’s interesting actually because I’m looking at doing more with the corporate sector because I know there’s more that we can do to support them. At the moment it’s mostly organisations contacting us to buy an existing case to perhaps use in their internal training programmes. What we find is most corporate organisations that are looking for a case written on them, they might tend really to go to the business school that’s close to them, perhaps not thinking about how we can support them. So that’s something I want to collaborate more with business schools to say we can also support the schools that are working with corporates to have those cases written.

So there’s a lot of potential to do more of that, but more often than not, at the moment, they would approach the business school if they wanted a case written about them. Then, normally, that faculty member would go then to that organisation and write a case, which then hopefully would be a case that would be published. But sometimes, depending on the need of that case, they may just want to keep it internally for their own training purposes and not share that with the wider case community, which is OK. But sometimes it can open up doors for them as well and highlight their brand, highlight their position in the market and be a promotional piece for them if they have a case study written about them that’s then made available to the global community. So it’s quite a good marketing tool.