On World Case Teaching Day, IMD has announced the creation of a “Case of the month” series that will appear on the first Monday of the month and explore its cases with in-depth articles and videos.
Highlighting the work of IMD faculty, the cases – both new and classic – explore topics including strategy, leadership, general management and sustainability in a diverse range of organizations. From major multinationals like Nestlé to family businesses like Firmenich, these cases serve as a key learning tool for MBA and EMBA participants and senior executives worldwide.
Friday, 5 February is World Case Teaching Day – a day of involvement and participation for the entire case community. The case method is an established pedagogical tool that features regularly at business schools around the world, including at IMD.
Cases expose participants to real-life decision-making as well as business and management theory, while at the same time helping them to develop a wide range of vital skills. These include negotiation, analysis, team and individual work, and the ability to avoid making decisions based on too little information. Cases present students with a problem, or set of problems, to be analyzed and contemplated in depth. After thorough discussion with their peers and professors, participants must then reach a consensus to solve the problems at hand.
“When you’re dealing with lots of uncertainty and ambiguity, case studies are a great way to capture a richness of experience and knowledge,” said Benoit Leleux, Stephan Schmidheiny Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance, and recipient of The Case Centre Top 40 Bestselling Case Authors 2019/20. “While we rely on other pedagogies as well, the beauty of the case method is that it produces learning that sticks – and that’s what we’re really after.”
Throughout its long history, IMD has been at the forefront of case writing and teaching; the institute’s cases have unique international focus and serve as a timeless tool for developing the leadership capabilities of executives and participants. IMD continues to regularly receive recognition for its outstanding case work – its 84 new cases published last year, as well as its repository of thousands of others, are used by companies, business schools and universities in 120-plus countries around the globe.
In 2020, IMD was honored with several important achievements in this area. Five case studies were cited as classics by The Case Centre – which is recognized as the independent home of the case method – and six others joined the bestsellers ranks. Classic cases included:
Marketing
- Innovation and Renovation: The Nespresso Story (Kamran Kashani/Joyce Miller)
- Value Selling at SKF Service (A): Tough Buyer Confronts Strategy (Kamran Kashani/Aimee DuBrule)
- Xiameter: The Past and Future of a “Disruptive Innovation” (Kamran Kashani/Inna Francis)
Distribution
- Lego: Consolidating Distribution (A) (Carlos Cordon/Ralf W. Seifert/Edwin Wellian)
Strategy and General Management
- Nestle’s Globe Program (A): The Early Months (Peter Killing)
The Case Centre’s bestsellers published by IMD are:
Economics, politics and business environment
- Cisco India (A): Innovation in Emerging Markets (Ivy Buche/Charles Dhanaraj)
Ethics and social responsibility
- Patagonia’s Sustainability Strategy: Don’t Buy Our Products (Francisco Szekely)
Marketing
- Value Selling at SKF Service (A): Tough Buyer Confronts Strategy (Kamran Kashani)
- Colgate-Palmolive: Cleopatra (Sandra Wandermerwe)
Strategy and general management
Before joining IMD, Frédéric Dalsace co-authored the case study, Michelin Fleet Solutions: From Selling Tires to Selling Kilometers, which also featured in the 2020 bestsellers under the marketing category.
Last month, adidas: How to keep running fast in a post-COVID-19 world? by Professor Niccolò Pisani garnered tremendous success; it is currently featured as one the recent bestsellers in The Case Centre’s strategy and general management category, and it has been repeatedly ranked as the most popular case study out of the over 60,000 held by the world’s leading distributor.
In 2020 IMD also swept several categories of the prestigious EFMD Case Writing Competition:
Indian Management Issues and Opportunities
Sustainable Leadership
- PMI’s Vision of a Smoke-Free Future: Can a Tobacco Company be Sustainable? (Vanina Farber, Natalia Olynec)
Supply Chain Management
- Workshop: Building an Industry 4.0 Transformation Roadmap (Ralf W. Seifert, Richard Markoff, Vasilis Karamalegos, Gustavo Ghory)
With two important prizes won in 2019/2020, Seifert is amongst the most honored of IMD’s case study authors. He believes that the method has significant merit and achieves a rare feat – bringing the experience of businesses and leaders together with professors to provide unparalleled insight.
“What motivates me to write case studies is the difference between textbook knowledge and what is required to put such knowledge into action,” said Seifert. “In terms of ‘Real learning, Real impact’ within a specific industry and organizational context, it engages executives to reflect on their initiatives and how best to advance them.”
IMD cases can be ordered at The Case Centre, a distributor of the institute’s full collection of over 1,500 cases.
