Most business schools rely heavily on the case study method. This was pioneered by Harvard Business School and in my opinion HBS cases tend to be the best.
Most business schools rely heavily on the case study method. Pioneered by Harvard Business School, HBS cases are often the best (I didn’t go to Harvard, but I read plenty of HBS cases in business school at Cornell). A good case study sets up a specific business problem, puts you in the protagonist’s shoes, and gives you enough information to craft an approach—without enough to make a perfect decision. It’s a great way to learn and to wrestle with real tradeoffs.
That said, traditional case studies have serious drawbacks. I can’t help wondering whether there’s room for “open source case studies” that would improve the learning experience.
People once paid thousands of dollars for Encyclopaedia Britannica. Then they paid $50 for Microsoft Encarta, with rich media and easy navigation. Now Wikipedia is free, updates in real time, and (though imperfect) has made what came before it largely obsolete. Perhaps the future of case studies looks similar: free, open source material that is continuously updated—and layered with social interaction.
I went to business school in the fall of 2008 (aka the financial apocalypse). The world was changing so quickly that some of our cases were rooted in assumptions that no longer held true. If case studies were open source, collaborative works, they could be updated in real time as conditions changed. They’d also make it easier to turn current events into case studies. Studying history is valuable, but understanding the present—and thinking about the future—is what ultimately drives success in your career.
Today, the time required to write, publish, and distribute cases limits how many can be about the problems unfolding right now. Open source case studies could provide fresher content while reducing the cost of education.
We’re already seeing momentum. MIT pushed in this direction with OpenCourseWare. Sebastian Thrun pursued a disruptive model with Udacity. Fred Wilson’s MBA Mondays has delivered free learning experiences to a large community. Creating high-quality content takes time, energy, and expertise—but the shift is visible.
If Wikipedia can become what it is today, it’s entirely possible that we’ll someday have a rich library of case studies that are powerful learning tools—and completely free.
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