Making a Case: The Birth of an HBS Case Study
from Harvard Business School's Enterprise newsletter
When Harvard Business School first opened its doors in 1908, the case
method of instruction was just an idea of the School's first Dean,
Edwin F. Gay. Gay envisioned an approach to classroom teaching that
would revolve around discussions of problems in business
administration. In 1911, Arch Wilkinson Shaw began teaching a
Business Policy course in which he presented to the class real
problems faced by business executives. These presentations would
become the first examples of the case method at HBS. HBS published
its first case study, The General Shoe Company, in 1921, written by
Assistant Dean Clinton Biddle.
The years have brought many changes in the way cases are conceived
and produced, and topics have expanded as innovations have broadened
the scope of business. Yet the case method remains the heart and soul
of how business is taught at HBS. "It's action learning," says HBS
senior lecturer Michael J. Roberts, executive director of case
development. "As professors, we have to distill the realities of
complex business issues and bring that into the classroom. Students,
in turn, want to extrapolate from that narrow experience to the world
at large. So, we have to pick good examples and maintain the
relevance of them."
Approximately 350 cases are developed at the School each year, to
address the needs, topics, and situations in specific courses or
programs. Cases also cover a broad range of business issues, and are
sometimes created to keep up with emerging trends, such as
e-commerce. Matching a potential case to a relevant issue within a
course is a vital element of case development. Roberts identifies
four factors that must be considered at the start:
- The issues on which the case will focus
- The analysis required on the part of students to address those issues
- The data required in the case to perform that analysis satisfactorily
- Where the data can be obtained
The development of cases can be issue driven, such as when a
professor wants to illustrate a particular issue in class through the
use of a case. In these instances, the professor must find an example
of a company that can highlight the issue around which a case can be
developed. Other cases are company/industry/executive driven,
sometimes inspired by research a professor has done on a company or
simply by learning about someone or something that he feels might
lead to an interesting case. Here, the case developer begins the
process without a clear picture of what the issues will be. "The key
is to find a slice of reality that will drive key learning points
home," Roberts explains.
Finding the exact picture is often a painstaking procedure that
involves identifying the precise angle of a business dilemma that
will spark classroom discussion and enrich learning. To provide a
capsule view of how a case might be developed, Roberts offers a
scenario in which a professor in an entrepreneurship class wants to
teach about term sheets. The professor begins by envisioning an
entrepreneur who has been offered a term sheet from a venture
capitalist. "From there," Roberts suggests, "he might say, 'What
about an entrepreneur who had two different term sheets, from
different venture capitalists, and then the students had to compare
them?' That would be even more interesting, richer, with more tension
and more room for discussion in terms of analyzing the differences
between each provision."The professor would then look for a company
that had recently faced such a dilemma.
Instead of randomly contacting companies, Roberts says the more
practical approach would be to contact some venture capitalists, and
ask them if they had encountered a situation in which they were
trying to fund a company that had another term sheet offer. "They
might give you three or four names," says Roberts, "and they'll often
volunteer to call the companies to explain the project." Then the
process of researching and writing the case begins. On average, a
case study takes one to four months to write.
A firm's motivation for becoming the subject of a case varies, but
clearly cases are not promotional vehicles. An organization may
participate to provide a service to HBS, or a case could be
facilitated by an HBS alumnus who wishes to give something back to
the School. Often a case study is an opportunity for an organization
to learn something about itself-good or bad-providing valuable,
unbiased information.
The impact of HBS cases extends far beyond the School's campus. For
example, Harvard Business School Publishing (HBSP) has developed a
special Web site for professors who use cases. Linda S. Doyle,
president and CEO of HBSP, reports that more than 20,000 academics
have signed up to use this site, to peruse cases for adoption in
their courses. In the 2001 fiscal year, a half million cases were
downloaded (free of charge) from the Web site, and over six million
cases were sold, primarily in the academic market. "This represents a
profound contribution to-and influence on-business education around
the world," Doyle says.
Eighty years after the first case was written, the case method is as
much as ever at the center of teaching and learning at HBS. Roberts
believes that the case method continues to be the most effective
teaching technique because of its applicability to real management
situations. "Those who practice business are in the real world making
decisions that have real consequences," he says. "The case method is
intellectually engaging for students because they acquire the
knowledge, skills, and tools to deal with the kind of problems
they'll encounter in their careers. Because they go through this
inductive reasoning process to arrive at answers, the learning
process is more powerful."
Case Facts at a Glance
| Average Number of Cases Produced Per Year |
Approximately 350* |
| Average Time to Write a Case |
1-4 Months |
| Number of Cases Studied by MBAs During Their Two Years |
Approximately 500 |
| Number of Cases Sold Per Year |
Approximately 6,000,000 |
* The majority of the world's management case studies are researched and written by HBS faculty.
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