In many professional schools–business, public policy, public health, medicine, and law–students learn through the “case method.” Students read case studies, usually 10 to 20 pages long, about a specific situation that presented real-world professionals with a difficult dilemma. The case study details the history, issues, concepts, and conflicts involved in the case. Then, in class, the professor and students discuss the best approach op the dilemma.
Students love case studies because they offer the kind of “real world” challenges that they might face in their careers. Professors love them because they offer a great vehicle for exploring key theories and concepts and stimulate great discussion and debate. Professionals find them useful for exploring the knottiest problems they face in business, government, and nonprofit organizations.
So what makes a great case study? Five key elements, which I will explain in this post: (1) A time- and issue-bounded dilemma that would be difficult for even smart and seasoned professionals; (2) brief explanations of issues and concepts; (3) The backstory, with vivid characters and moments and a “narrative arc”; (4) data and other information that students can use to support different positions; and (5) Scenarios that could lead students in several different directions.
I have been involved with case studies for years. While serving as executive director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston at Harvard, I worked with case writers and used cases in seminars with graduate students. Later, at the Yale School of Management, I was a case writer and editor. So I have a special appreciation of their value.
Before we get to the case study “formula,” let’s explore why case studies are such great learning tools.
The Power of Great Case Studies
Case studies are also great for businesses and professional organizations. Most professionals encounter a limited number of difficult challenges. The specifics differ, but the challenges are regular. If the company can capture these challenges in case studies–and then debate the kinds of issues that come up and how to respond–the organization will perform better.
Let me give you an example.
David Luberoff, a friend and colleague at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, has written a number of terrific case studies on urban transportation issues. One concerned the “Big Dig,” Boston’s multi-billion-dollar project to remove the elevated Interstate 93 and replace it with an underground tunnel. This project has been described as both a boondoggle and a visionary work of urban revitalization. Without taking sides, Luberoff explores the project’s origins, political pressures and tradeoffs, engineering and design challenges, and spiraling costs. David’s case study offers great value not just to professors and students, but also to policy makers. As a longtime resident of Massachusetts, I wish the state and city had a case study like this when the Big Dig project was first proposed and debated.
Here’s another example:
One of the most popular case studies at Harvard explores a 1970s controversy over a proposal to develop the Park Plaza Hotel, near the Boston Common. Written by Colin Diver, it asks a specific question: “What should Miles Mahoney do?” Mahoney was the head of the Massachusetts agency with authority over such projects. When he decided that the Park Plaza failed to meet five of six key criteria, he ignited a firestorm of protest. The city’s mayor, the redevelopment director, and the project’s developers all lobbied the governor to reverse Mahoney’s decision. Then the developers “revised” their proposal and the governor responded favorably. But the “new” plan was really the old plan. Should Mahoney have held his ground, against all the leading development and political interests–or should he have caved in?
Got time for one more example?
I recently talked to a doctor friend, in a major midwestern city, who was developing new systems for managing extreme health problems like addiction, chronic disease, and homelessness. All too often, my friend explained, hospitals treat patients like products on an assembly line. Patients comes along and health-care professionals address one or two challenges and then put them back on the streets. But effective care requires coordinated help, with social service agencies, families and friends, employers and others, as well as health professionals. How should the hospital coordinate this challenge? What kind of investments should it take? And once the work is done, how can the hospital learn from the experience? A case study would provide the perfect learning tool for doctors, nurses, and others to identify issues, problems, and opportunities for similar situations.
In each of these cases, case studies would be great not just for classes, but also for professionals on the job. Each would give professionals useful frameworks for debating and decision making on their own issues and problems.
So how do you create a great case study?
The Elements of a Great Case Study
A great case study, like a great book or movie, provides a complete, satisfying experience. A great case study brings the audience into a different world, where ordinary people struggle to solve difficult problems … where people struggle to assess the costs and benefits of different actions … where people often struggle against each other to pursue their interests and ideas.
Now, let’s take an overview of these elements of a great case study.
(1) A time- and issue-bounded dilemma
A case study should never–EVER–attempt to provide a comprehensive or universal answer to a problem. As policy makers and managers, we often want to develop policies that solve a big problem. But that’s exactly what you should avoid doing with case studies.
Whatever problem you take up, make sure you discuss specific people, addressing specific challenges, at a specific time and place.
Let me illustrate with the dilemmas of some case studies I wrote for the Yale School of Management:
- Manchester United Football Club: How should investors determine a value for Manchester United, the most successful sports team in the world, when it goes public and offers stock shares on the market?
- Samsung Electronics: Should Samsung attempt to beat Apple, head on, in the smartphone market?
- Herman Miller: How can the producer of high-end furniture maintain its character as a value-based company while expanding its operations with acquisitions of other companies with different cultures?
- San Miguel de Proyectos Agropecuarios: Should San Miguel, the producer of the superfood amaranth, expand operations as a for-profit or a civic-oriented company?
These questions are not only practical. They also give people a “north star.” They provide a model that all smart leaders and managers should follow, which is to focus on The One Thing. No matter how complicated a problem is in business, government, or the nonprofit sector, people need to figure out what matters most. Good case studies model how to do just that.
(2) Explanations of issues and concepts
In most professional situations, people must deal with a wide range of technical issues and ideas. In order for students to address the dilemma, they need a working knowledge of these issues and ideas. Some readers of case studies do not use this technical vocabulary, so they need guidance to the issues under discussion.
Therefore, case studies need to clearly define technical terms. These definitions should provide enough examples for the reader to see how the terms are used.
These terms can be defined in the body of the text or in “sidebars” or “boxes” outside the main columns of text. When these terms are simple and straightforward, I suggest offering the definitions in the main text. The more you can create a “flow” for the reader, the better. But when you need to define and explain several terms–and when the terms require some time and attention to understand–I suggest using sidebars or boxes. That way, readers can find terms easily if they need help understanding a passage.
(3) A story, with vivid characters and moments
As Jaques tells Duke Senior in Shakespeare’s As You Like It: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
Likewise, all professional challenges are really challenges, which play out as stories and need resolution.
Therefore, give your audience a story. As we have explored elsewhere, a story takes a simple structure:
Beginning: To start we get introduced to the characters and their world–and their dilemma. The characters offer a vehicle for exploring the different elements of the challenge, why they’re hard to solve, and what possible responses might present themselves.
The story often begins in media res, Latin for “in the middle of the thing.” We see the protagonists facing some difficult dilemma and wondering what to do. In this scene we get to know the characters and the world, their motivations and limitations. Then, once we see the character at this moment of truth, we can explore the backstory (how they got here in the first place) and the challenges moving forward.
Right away, we need to start learning about the values of the characters and organizations. People’s choices depend on what they want to achieve in life. The values of “Chainsaw Al” Dunlop (Scott, Sunbeam) differ from those of Steve Jobs (Apple), Wendy Kopp (Teach for America), Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway), Indra Nooyi (PepsiCo), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), or Angela Ahrents (Burberry, Apple). And of course, their values differ from the people who run the departments and programs of these companies.
In all difficult dilemmas, people struggle to reconcile their values and goals with those of others inside and outside the organization.
Middle: In the middle lies the struggle. Decision makers face a number of options, none of which is perfect. All the options carry costs as well as benefits. And so they struggle to figure out the best course of action. They gather information, they look for angles, they debate, they argue, they cajole and bargain. This deliberation has many starts and stops, many points where people and issues could have gone in different directions.
The case study should reflect all of these issues and options. Ideally, the case study breaks them down into separate fragments, with headlines and subheadlines, so the readers/students can explore these issues, one by one.
End: In a class drama, the final section of a story offers a resolution of the dilemma. In a case study, the final section does not offer one resolutions but suggests many possible resolutions. This is the basis of class discussion and debate. Should the company take the product to market … move into a new product line … embrace this or that marketing strategy … go public with a stock offering … keep or fire its CEO … invest in new or different R&D … create a new partnership … lobby for or against government legislation of regulations … ? These are just some of the dilemmas that students face.
In the end, the students will propose–and then argue, in class–which resolution to give the story.
This is the power of the case study. It invites everyone–the professor and students and professionals–to finish the story.
Stories are powerful learning tools because they invite the reader to become part of the story. The author Neil Gaiman puts it best: “In reading, you get to feel things, visit places and worlds you would never otherwise know. You learn that everyone else out there is a me, as well. Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals.”
(4) Data and other information
If you need good narrative to give the dilemma a shape–and to engage the reader, with empathy and imagination–you need good data and other information to analyze the dilemma.
The data and information depend on the case and dilemma. It could include statistics, testimony and quotations, definitions, excerpts from company records, and descriptions of products.
So where should you put this data? Some cases cite the information at the place where the case study’s characters might use them. Consider this example from my case study of Herman Miller, where I describe the company’s acquisition of the retail company Design Within Research:
Over the years, DWR had experienced extreme highs and lows. The company went public in 2004, valued at $211 million on opening day—70 times total earnings the year before. Management increased the number of physical stores to 63 by 2006, but the expansion was too much, too fast. “We got cocky, silly, fat,” one top official later admitted. … John Edelman and John McPhee took over in 2010. … Immediately, they overhauled DWR’s operations and moved headquarters from San Francisco to Stamford, Connecticut. Quickly, they closed 30 stores. They developed a new retail strategy and increased sales from $113 million in 2010 to $218 million in 2013.
In this case, data was essential for understanding the flow of the narrative. It belonged in the text. Too much data, of course, would have interrupted that flow.
As an extra resource, you might want to put other data and information at the end, as “exhibits.” In that Herman Miller case, here are some examples of these kinds of exhibits:
• Descriptions of iconic Herman Miller products (text)
• Excerpts from Herman Miller’s mission statement “Things That Matter” (text)
• Leadership of Herman Miller (biographies of CEOs, board chairmen, and presidents)
• Images of the Herman Miller campus (photographs)
• Herman Miller financials (statistics)
• Trends in manufacturing in a variety of industries (statistics)
• Major company acquisitions of Herman Miller (list)
What to put certain data and information is a judgment call. When you’re deciding, answer three questions: (1) What does the reader need to know when? (2) What is essential information and what is an extra resource? (3) What enables the best possible flow for the reader?
(5) Scenarios that lead in different directions
Here’s where the rubber meets the road. Once we have offered students the stories and information, the dilemmas and the context, the technical terminology, we need to guide them toward responses.
Usually, the best scenarios begin with a single question: What should X do?
After posting that question, offer key concepts or models to guide debate. Give people different “angles” on the debate, so they can consider all possibilities. These angles will be great for the debates that occur among students, professors, professionals, reporters, or whoever is reading and discussing the case study.
Let me give an example. I wrote a case study about Samsung’s battle with Apple over control of the smartphone industry. The key question was: What should Samsung do next? Should Samsung try to battle Apple over the high end of the market? Should Samsung compete where Apple already has captured the market (like the U.S.)? Should Samsung pick a more fluid, open market (like India or China) before Apple wins dominance? Should Samsung focus on the longterm battle by investing in R&D to great the next-generation phone?
We might rephrase these questions more broadly: Fight locally or fight in a bigger arena? Focus on a niche or a whole product line? Win with superior products or cutting-edge marketing? Battle to win now or later? Attack directly or pick an outside fight? Seek advantage from government or not? Get outside investments or devote existing resources?
These are broad questions frame the debate in a way that almost any company, in any industry, faces. These “frames” get readers thinking about their own challenges. That’s the ultimate value of a case.
One Last Thing . . .
A good case study works magic. It brings people into the world of business, politics, health care–whatever field where professionals need to make hard decisions.
As Katherine Boo and Suzanne Goldsmith write, in The Washington Monthly: “What case studies have in common isn’t length but the ability to recreate the historical moment, in all its complexity and idiosyncrasy.”
A compelling way to focus on what matters–and to debate complex issues–is exactly what we need to do our jobs well, whatever our profession.
