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Top 40 Most Popular Case Studies of 2020

A case study on the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore claimed the top spot in the annual review of case usage conducted by the Yale School of Management’s CRDT.

A case study on the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore claimed the top spot in the annual review of case usage conducted by the Yale School of Management’s Case Research and Development Team (SOM CRDT), dethroning "Coffee 2016", the top case in the last two annual surveys. Marina Bay Sands case examines the intersection of marketing, operations, and sustainability at the luxury resort.

Coffee 2016 fell to second place and a note on Search Fund Company Boards took the third spot. Cases on Shake Shack, Volkswagen, Cadbury, Netflix, Endesa, and the Mayo Clinic rounded out the top ten.

All of the top 40 cases are available for purchase from Yale Management Media .

The list had a particular international flavor this year with 19 of the cases featuring organizations located outside the United States. The top 40 featured 27 "raw" online cases and 13 "cooked" .pdf cases. The functional perspectives of the cases spanned the full range of interests at the Yale School of Management, from customers, the workforce, state & society to investors, entrepreneurship, and sourcing and managing funds.

Other year-end data for 2020 showed:

• Consumption of “raw'' online cases by numbers of users and countries remained steady in 2020 as compared to 2019, but over 50 more titles were viewed, a roughly 30 percent increase.
• Just under half of raw case users were from the U.S., up from a third the year before.
• Customers bought 197 titles, 70 more than in 2019.
• A third of the top 40 cases featured women in leadership positions.
• Interest in SOM case studies remained steady with almost 150K page views of the SOM CRDT case directory .
• Close to 80 percent of those who browsed the directory were from outside the U.S., a 20 percent increase over  2019.
• The top 40 cases were supervised by 22 different Yale SOM faculty members, several supervising two cases or more.

SOM CRDT compiled its third annual top 40 list by combining data from publishers, Google Analytics, direct sales, and other measures of interest and adoption.

The complete list of Top 40 cases studies for 2020:

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Top 40 Most Popular Case Studies of 2021

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HBS Case Selections

Revlon India's Turnaround: Navigating Online-Offline Decisions Using a Balanced Scorecard

• Tatiana Sandino
• Samuel Grad

Urban Company

• Krishna G. Palepu

RMZ 4.0: "How fast do we want to run?"

• Boris Groysberg
• Sarah L. Abbott

NIO: A Chinese EV Company's Global Strategy

• William C. Kirby
• Noah B. Truwit

India: Will the Giant Emerge?

• Christian H.M. Ketels
• Radhika Kak

JPMorgan Chase in Paris

• Joseph L. Bower
• Dante Roscini
• Elena Corsi
• Michael Norris

OpenAI: Idealism Meets Capitalism

• Shikhar Ghosh
• Shweta Bagai

Generative AI and the Future of Work

• Christopher Stanton
• Matt Higgins

Copilot(s): Generative AI at Microsoft and GitHub

• Frank Nagle
• Shane Greenstein
• Maria P. Roche
• Nataliya Langburd Wright
• Sarah Mehta

Innovation at Moog Inc.

• Brian J. Hall
• Ashley V. Whillans
• Davis Heniford
• Dominika Randle
• Caroline Witten

Innovation at Google Ads: The Sales Acceleration and Innovation Labs (SAIL) (A)

• Linda A. Hill
• Emily Tedards

Juan Valdez: Innovation in Caffeination

• Michael I. Norton
• Jeremy Dann

UGG Steps into the Metaverse

• Shunyuan Zhang
• Sharon Joseph
• Sunil Gupta
• Julia Kelley

Metaverse Wars

• David B. Yoffie

Roblox: Virtual Commerce in the Metaverse

• Ayelet Israeli
• Nicole Tempest Keller

Timnit Gebru: "SILENCED No More" on AI Bias and The Harms of Large Language Models

• Tsedal Neeley
• Stefani Ruper

Hugging Face: Serving AI on a Platform

• Kerry Herman
• Sarah Gulick

SmartOne: Building an AI Data Business

• Karim R. Lakhani
• Pippa Tubman Armerding
• Gamze Yucaoglu
• Fares Khrais

Honeywell and the Great Recession (A)

• Sandra J. Sucher
• Susan Winterberg

Target: Responding to the Recession

• Ranjay Gulati
• Catherine Ross
• Richard S. Ruback
• Royce Yudkoff

Hometown Foods: Changing Price Amid Inflation

• Julian De Freitas
• Jeremy Yang
• Das Narayandas

Elon Musk's Big Bets

• Eric Baldwin

Elon Musk: Balancing Purpose and Risk

Tesla's ceo compensation plan.

• John R. Wells
• Gabriel Ellsworth

China Rapid Finance: The Collapse of China's P2P Lending Industry

• Bonnie Yining Cao
• John P. McHugh

Forbidden City: Launching a Craft Beer in China

• Christopher A. Bartlett
• Carole Carlson

Booking.com

• Stefan Thomke
• Daniela Beyersdorfer

Innovation at Uber: The Launch of Express POOL

• Chiara Farronato
• Alan MacCormack

Racial Discrimination on Airbnb (A)

• Michael Luca
• Scott Stern
• Hyunjin Kim

Unilever's Response to the Future of Work

• William R. Kerr
• Emilie Billaud
• Mette Fuglsang Hjortshoej

AT&T, Retraining, and the Workforce of Tomorrow

• Joseph B. Fuller
• Carl Kreitzberg

Leading Change in Talent at L'Oreal

• Lakshmi Ramarajan
• Vincent Dessain
• Emer Moloney
• William W. George
• Andrew N. McLean

Eve Hall: The African American Investment Fund in Milwaukee

• Steven S. Rogers
• Alterrell Mills

United Housing - Otis Gates

• Mercer Cook

The Home Depot: Leadership in Crisis Management

• Herman B. Leonard
• Marc J. Epstein
• Melissa Tritter

The Great East Japan Earthquake (B): Fast Retailing Group's Response

• Hirotaka Takeuchi
• Kenichi Nonomura
• Dena Neuenschwander
• Meghan Ricci
• Kate Schoch
• Sergey Vartanov

Insurer of Last Resort?: The Federal Financial Response to September 11

• David A. Moss
• Sarah Brennan

Under Armour

• Rory McDonald
• Clayton M. Christensen
• Daniel West
• Jonathan E. Palmer
• Tonia Junker

Hunley, Inc.: Casting for Growth

• John A. Quelch
• James T. Kindley

Bitfury: Blockchain for Government

• Mitchell B. Weiss

Deutsche Bank: Pursuing Blockchain Opportunities (A)

• Lynda M. Applegate
• Christoph Muller-Bloch

Maersk: Betting on Blockchain

• Scott Johnson

Yum! Brands

• Jordan Siegel
• Christopher Poliquin

Bharti Airtel in Africa

• Tanya Bijlani

Li & Fung 2012

• F. Warren McFarlan
• Michael Shih-ta Chen
• Keith Chi-ho Wong

Sony and the JK Wedding Dance

• John Deighton
• Leora Kornfeld

United Breaks Guitars

David dao on united airlines.

• Benjamin Edelman
• Jenny Sanford

Marketing Reading: Digital Marketing

• Joseph Davin

Social Strategy at Nike

• Mikolaj Jan Piskorski
• Ryan Johnson

The Tate's Digital Transformation

Social strategy at american express, mellon financial and the bank of new york.

• Carliss Y. Baldwin
• Ryan D. Taliaferro

The Walt Disney Company and Pixar, Inc.: To Acquire or Not to Acquire?

• Juan Alcacer
• David J. Collis

Dow's Bid for Rohm and Haas

• Benjamin C. Esty

Finance Reading: The Mergers and Acquisitions Process

• John Coates

Apple: Privacy vs. Safety? (A)

• Henry W. McGee
• Nien-he Hsieh
• Sarah McAra

Sidewalk Labs: Privacy in a City Built from the Internet Up

• Leslie K. John

Data Breach at Equifax

• Suraj Srinivasan
• Quinn Pitcher
• Jonah S. Goldberg

Apple's Core

• Noam Wasserman

Design Thinking and Innovation at Apple

• Barbara Feinberg

Apple Inc. in 2012

• Penelope Rossano

Iz-Lynn Chan at Far East Organization (Abridged)

• Anthony J. Mayo
• Dana M. Teppert

Barbara Norris: Leading Change in the General Surgery Unit

• Nitin Nohria
• Deborah Bell

Adobe Systems: Working Towards a "Suite" Release (A)

• David A. Thomas
• Lauren Barley

Home Nursing of North Carolina

Castronics, llc, gemini investors, angie's list: ratings pioneer turns 20.

• Robert J. Dolan

Basecamp: Pricing

• Frank V. Cespedes
• Robb Fitzsimmons

J.C. Penney's "Fair and Square" Pricing Strategy

J.c. penney's 'fair and square' strategy (c): back to the future.

• Jose B. Alvarez

Osaro: Picking the best path

• James Palano
• Bastiane Huang

HubSpot and Motion AI: Chatbot-Enabled CRM

• Thomas Steenburgh

GROW: Using Artificial Intelligence to Screen Human Intelligence

• Ethan S. Bernstein
• Paul D. McKinnon
• Paul Yarabe

GitLab and the Future of All-Remote Work (A)

• Prithwiraj Choudhury
• Emma Salomon

TCS: From Physical Offices to Borderless Work

Creating a virtual internship at goldman sachs.

• Iavor Bojinov
• Jan W. Rivkin

Starbucks Coffee Company: Transformation and Renewal

• Nancy F. Koehn
• Kelly McNamara
• Nora N. Khan
• Elizabeth Legris

JCPenney: Back in Business

• K. Shelette Stewart
• Christine Snively

Arup: Building the Water Cube

• Robert G. Eccles
• Amy C. Edmondson
• Dilyana Karadzhova

(Re)Building a Global Team: Tariq Khan at Tek

Managing a global team: greg james at sun microsystems, inc. (a).

• Thomas J. DeLong

Organizational Behavior Reading: Leading Global Teams

Ron ventura at mitchell memorial hospital.

• Heide Abelli

Anthony Starks at InSiL Therapeutics (A)

• Gary P. Pisano
• Vicki L. Sato

Wolfgang Keller at Konigsbrau-TAK (A)

• John J. Gabarro

The 2010 Chilean Mining Rescue (A)

• Faaiza Rashid

IDEO: Human-Centered Service Design

• Ryan W. Buell
• Andrew Otazo
• Benjamin Jones
• Alexis Brownell

Midland Energy Resources, Inc.: Cost of Capital

• Timothy A. Luehrman
• Joel L. Heilprin

Globalizing the Cost of Capital and Capital Budgeting at AES

• Mihir A. Desai
• Doug Schillinger

Cost of Capital at Ameritrade

• Mark Mitchell
• Erik Stafford

Finance Reading: Cost of Capital

Circles: series d financing.

• Paul W. Marshall
• Kristin J. Lieb
• William A. Sahlman
• Michael J. Roberts

Andreessen Horowitz

• Thomas R. Eisenmann

Entrepreneurship Reading: Partnering with Venture Capitalists

• Jeffrey J. Bussgang

David Neeleman: Flight Path of a Servant Leader (A)

• Matthew D. Breitfelder

Coach Hurley at St. Anthony High School

• Scott A. Snook
• Bradley C. Lawrence

Shapiro Global

• Michael Brookshire
• Monica Haugen
• Michelle Kravetz
• Sarah Sommer

Kathryn McNeil (A)

• Joseph L. Badaracco Jr.
• Jerry Useem

Carol Fishman Cohen: Professional Career Reentry (A)

• Myra M. Hart
• Robin J. Ely
• Susan Wojewoda

Alex Montana at ESH Manufacturing Co.

• Michael Kernish

Michelle Levene (A)

• Tiziana Casciaro
• Victoria W. Winston

John and Andrea Rice: Entrepreneurship and Life

• Howard H. Stevenson
• Janet Kraus
• Shirley M. Spence

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This listing contains abstracts and ordering information for case studies written and published by faculty at Stanford GSB.

Publicly available cases in this collection are distributed by Harvard Business Publishing and The Case Centre .

Stanford case studies with diverse protagonists, along with case studies that build “equity fluency” by focusing on DEI-related issues and opportunities are listed in the Case Compendium developed by the Center for Equity, Gender and Leadership at the Berkeley Haas School of Business.

SCiFi Foods: Real Beef, Reinvented

Jetblue ventures in 2024: the evolution of a cvc, amman mineral international: mining for stories, balmere (b).

This case centers on Madhu Shetti, CEO and founder of Balmere, a company developing skincare products for individuals undergoing cancer and autoimmune therapy. After hearing the struggles of cancer survivors during a support meeting, Shetti is driven to…

Designing through Complexity at Modsy

Shanna Tellerman, the visionary founder and CEO of Modsy, a pioneering 3D design and e-commerce platform, faced a tumultuous journey marked by rapid growth and unforeseen challenges. Launched in 2015, Modsy aimed to revolutionize the home design industry…

Note on U.S. Regulatory Regime for the Alcoholic Beverages Industry and Imports

This note offers a look at the United States’s regulatory framework for its alcoholic beverages sector, from production and importation to distribution and retail sales.

Also see: P105: Sông Cái Distillery: Producing Gin and Navigating Regulatory …

Enowa: Powering an Entire Region with 100% Renewables

In August 2023, Jens Madrian considered the final question arising from his presentation to researchers at Stanford on designing a 100 percent renewable energy system for an ambitious development initiative named NEOM, signifying new future, in Saudi…

Humanity in the Age of AI

Sông cái distillery: producing gin and navigating regulatory uncertainty in vietnam.

Vietnamese American Daniel Nguyen founded Sông Cái Distillery in Vietnam in 2019 as a way to give back to his ancestral homeland. By producing the country’s first home-grown gin using botanicals from local farmers, Nguyen hoped to add value to their goods…

Noodle Analytics in 2024: Exploring the Frontiers of AI

In January 2024, Stephen Pratt, co-founder and long-time CEO of Noodle Analytics (Noodle.ai), reflects on the company’s significant milestones as he prepares to transition to a strategic advisory role. Founded in 2016, Noodle.ai embarked on a journey to…

Long Term Hold

2024 search fund study, launching virta health, goodrx: a prescription for drug savings.

GoodRx, which launched in 2011, had created a popular online platform that helped millions of patients across America afford their medications. The U.S. pharmaceuticals market was estimated at $527 billion in 2022. But consumers and health care…

Financial Metrics at DelishGo

DelishGo, a Los Angeles-based unicorn founded in 2019, has experienced rapid growth and expansion, raising $150 million in a 2023 funding round, resulting in a $1 billion post-money valuation. The company operates a multi-sided online marketplace for…

Uber in 2024: From Industry Disruption to Creating Value For All Stakeholders

Dara Khosrowshahi became the CEO of Uber in August 2017, following internal turbulence and serious headwinds related to the company’s governance and reputation. Five short years later, Uber was clearly back on course, building on the success of its…

CEO Crisis in Napa: Laila Tarraf

Intersections in paradise: economics and sustainability in palau, 2024, udemy: the founding story.

This case explores the first few years of Udemy, an education technology platform for massive open online courses (MOOC). The case covers the background of Eren Bali, one of the founders of the company, and describes how the founders created and evolved…

Adobe in 2023: Transforming Marketing Through Digital Experience

Adobe, founded in 1982, set out to develop software that would enable high-fidelity digital printing and publishing. A decade later, Adobe PDF quickly became the industry standard for preserving and sharing digital document formatting, fonts, images, and…

GoodLeap, spearheaded by Hayes Barnard, emerges as a pioneering financing platform offering comprehensive solutions for sustainable living, including solar loans, home purchasing, refinancing, and improvement loans. Barnard, with a robust background at…

Seconds to Save Lives with Viz.ai

Ajaib: building a high-growth southeast asian fintech venture.

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10 Business Case Studies to Teach Online

Explore more.

• Case Teaching
• Course Materials
• Digital Learning

FEATURED CASE STUDIES

COVID-19 at Oxford University Hospitals. Karthik Ramanna of University of Oxford

Arlan Hamilton and Backstage Capital. Laura Huang of Harvard Business School

Showrooming at BestBuy. Chen Lin of CEIBS

The Case of the Unidentified Industries, 2018. Mihir Desai of Harvard Business School

“Dear White Boss…” Meredith Burnett of Kogod School of Business at American University

Unilever’s New Global Strategy: Competing Through Sustainability. Christopher Bartlett of Harvard Business School

TrustSphere: Building a Market for Relationship Analytics. Anna Tavis of NYU School of Professional Studies

Benevento Foods: When the Rubber Hits the Dough. David Wood of Ivey Business School

Dollar Shave Club. Karin Kollenz-Quetard of EDHEC Business School

Uber Africa: Making Cash and Alternative Payments Work in Kenya through Contextual Leadership. Caren Scheepers of University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science

Curious to understand how educators are teaching business case studies virtually (whether they’ve done so for years or only recently transitioned their teaching online in the pandemic’s wake), we asked 10 experienced case teachers to share a case that they’ve found works particularly well in an online environment. The educators also reveal whether they’ve changed their approach to teaching the case—and how—to keep students engaged in a fully virtual setting.

We previously asked educators to share their favorite cases to teach in the classroom; the list below expands on that theme to include cases that work particularly well online. These cases range in topic from COVID-19 to race in the workplace and also represent a variety of disciplines, from entrepreneurship to operations management.

1. COVID-19 at Oxford University Hospitals

Karthik Ramanna, Professor of Business and Public Policy, University of Oxford

“The case COVID-19 at Oxford University Hospitals is set in mid-March of this year, just before the lockdowns and the first wave of the pandemic was expected to hit the West. There was a lot of uncertainty and anxiety about the virus, and government advice was often contradictory. The case protagonist is the chief medical officer of one of the largest public hospitals in Europe, and she has to convene a hybrid meeting of her doctors explaining to them that the government wants elective surgeries to continue for a few more days, even as there are critical shortages of PPE. The reason is the government doesn’t want the hospital systems to back up with elective surgeries as we enter a potentially indefinite shutdown. But the surgeons are themselves nervous, and some want to defy the government order.

It’s a case about active listening, morale management, and collective decision-making in a crisis. The issues might seem, at first, very specific to medics, but all organizations—business, government, and nonprofit—are being stretched to make decisions that involve staff taking risks to keep operations going. How do you take the team along and reinforce your organizational culture through that journey? The protagonist has to communicate and work with her team in a hybrid environment (in person and online), so this case works really well for hybrid and online classrooms.

The first thing that comes up during the case discussion is the sheer number of issues on the CMO’s plate on just that one morning in mid-March. So, students need to learn how to prioritize, to triage. This is a great activity to disperse students into smaller breakout rooms to come up with a top-three priorities list. In the breakouts, they quickly see how varied their priorities are and how difficult it is in even a small group to come up with a consensus list. They start to understand what it means to have good judgment on such matters.

Next, there is the issue of communicating with the nervous surgeons. The case lends itself well to role plays online, because the protagonist has to address the surgeons in the same way. How do you placate your key employees in a remote setup during a pandemic when your own boss is requiring you to ask those employees to take more risks? Ideally, you’d want to have a difficult conversation like that in person, but we just aren’t being afforded that reality right now. Students learn to adapt their online presence for the task at hand.”

Educators interested in this case should email the Oxford Case Centre .

2. Arlan Hamilton and Backstage Capital

Laura Huang, Associate Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

Excerpted from Associate Professor Huang’s Inside the Case video :

“ Arlan Hamilton and Backstage Capital is a case I wrote that explores the journey of venture capitalist and founder Arlan Hamilton, a Black woman who identifies as LGBTQ. The case talks about the norms around venture capital and how women, people of color, and people with nontraditional backgrounds really struggle to secure the necessary venture capital for their firms and for entrepreneurial success. While the protagonist once lived in her car, she was able to go on to start Backstage Capital, an investment fund that seeks to support underestimated, disadvantaged entrepreneurs.

It’s a great case to really introduce important concepts in entrepreneurship, as well as early stage financing; what it means in terms of diversity, equality, and implicit bias; and really how pioneering individuals and organizations can change the world of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial financing and make it a more inclusive space. My hope is that this case pushes students to consider what these types of industries look like, and the types of progress that can be made, while really understanding entrepreneurial finance and entrepreneurship and the opportunities within.”

“This is a great case to teach online because I find there are lots of things that people are willing to debate—and there are strong opinions. Over the course of going through this case in the class discussion, we’ll see lots of polarizing comments come out. And then what I like to do is put students into dyads or pairs. I often have someone who is assisting that helps put students into these pairs, where one person has one perspective and one person has a very different perspective. Then, when we put them in breakout rooms, they have a chance to one-on-one debate. When we come back as a class, we debrief, and we talk about these perspectives and the different points and the different ways in which they were able to communicate with each other.

We use lots of online tools here, such as breakout rooms and the chat features, to really stimulate discussion, and it makes the debrief really rich.”

Additional comments from Associate Professor Huang:

“In general, the biggest change that I’ve made in teaching online (instead of in the classroom), is using the online tools as an opportunity to get frequent and quick ‘pulse checks’ on what the students are thinking at any moment.

For example, if there’s a particularly provocative topic that we’re discussing, I love to ask students to just ‘chat in one adjective that describes your current feeling right now,’ This gives me a sense for how some are feeling, for example, ‘frustrated,’ while others are feeling ‘determined,’ and so on. I never would have been able to get such a quick check on the emotions in the entire room, in such a quick fashion, when in the physical classroom. This is extremely helpful when we’re discussing contentious issues, such as the ones that we discuss in Arlan Hamilton and Backstage Capital . I also encourage students to share examples from their own work experiences in this way.”

3. TrustSphere: Building a Market for Relationship Analytics

Anna A. Tavis, Clinical Associate Professor, NYU, School of Professional Studies

“I teach this case in a synchronous online course called People and Organizational Management, which serves as an immersion and introduction to the MS in the Human Capital Analytics and Technology program at NYU’s School of Professional Studies.

The case describes a seven-year-old advanced-stage startup that introduces a cutting-edge relationship analytics technology to the market. The fact that this case is focused on measuring and interpreting patterns of digital communications is perfectly fitting with the current reality of remote working and learning that the students in this class are experiencing.

The case lends itself perfectly to online teaching. Here is how I make this case come alive for my students.

Manish Goel, the protagonist in this case, is based in London while the majority of my students are in the United States. As I’m now teaching the case online, I can (and do!) invite Manish Goel to guest lecture in class and tell his own story.

I also demo TrustSphere technology for the students just in time to enable them to understand how it works, as well as give them an opportunity to log in and try out the technology for themselves.

Once the facts are established and the initial business case is described and agreed upon, I divide the students into breakout groups and ask them to develop solutions for the case’s main dilemma. The online setting allows all teams to work in parallel on their own scenarios. I can also circulate and drop into the teams’ individual discussions.

When the groups are joined back, they showcase and defend their solutions. We keep a whiteboard running to record the key points in the presentations. In the end, we do an anonymous poll to vote for the best solutions among them all.

Finally, as a class, we prepare one agreed-upon presentation for Manish Goel, the CEO. The case ends with the class receiving the feedback from Manish on our solution in the next class.

A clear advantage of teaching this case online is that we are able to connect with the company, bring the CEO to a live class, establish parallel teams to work on the solutions, and learn from the CEO himself as to the efficacy of the solution we proposed. Additionally, the students learn the technology together in the demo presented in class and are able to connect not only to the content but also the context of the case.”

4. The Case of the Unidentified Industries, 2018

Mihir A. Desai, Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance, Harvard Business School

Excerpted from Professor Desai’s Inside the Case video :

“I developed versions of this case over the last 10 years as I was seeking a tool that would allow me to introduce finance in a rigorous but accessible way to audiences who might feel that finance could be intimidating or challenging.

This case’s format of a puzzle, almost like a game, is a really fun way to let people in so they discover finance is actually really fun. Although some of the concepts might be new to them, students quickly develop some really big intuitions about finance and the process. I’ve found this case to be the ideal way to introduce a finance course, and to introduce the idea of finance to MBA students, undergrads, and even executives.”

“I have taught this case online, and it’s really fun. I mean, the key thing to remember is the case takes some time, especially if you are willing to really explore what all those different ratios and numbers do, and it can take two sessions. So, in that kind of setting, I think the key thing to remember with online teaching is that I’ve at least found it to be somewhat less efficient. I just get through less. And so, some of the places you can go down a path, yet you might want to curtail that a little bit more.

For example, I take the bank, which is one of the first companies to be identified, and in traditional classrooms I do a little digression on banks. And when you’re doing it online, it’s just too costly to do that because it can take five or 10 minutes in a way that maybe would not happen in a classroom. So, the only thing I would say that’s really different about being online is you may want to just trim your sails a little bit in terms of the amount that you try to accomplish.”

Additional comments from Professor Desai:

“One of the challenges to teaching online is keeping attention and energy high. The Case of the Unidentified Industries, 2018 is a challenging but doable puzzle, so it provides lots of intrigue and morsels of rewards along the way to sustain an online format. Finally, it culminates in a tidy resolution, which provides students with a great feeling of satisfaction. The case can be punctuated with lots of shorter opportunities for breakout rooms where smaller groups can tackle a piece of the puzzle and then reconvene to share their ideas. Ideally, you could teach it over two one-and-a-quarter-hour sessions, with over 10 breakout rooms of three minutes each spread along the way. Students can prepare in advance or do it on the fly. To me, it’s the perfect antidote to the cold medium of online teaching.”

5. “Dear White Boss…”

Meredith Burnett, Professorial Lecturer, Kogod School of Business at American University

“This Harvard Business Review article , which behaves much like a case, is about Black employees working in a majority white work environment. They feel like their work is monotonous. The job is very transactional. It’s about making numbers and motivating people to get those numbers, and if they don’t make it, they’re fired. But at the same time, their managers have created such a tense work environment that employees are reluctant to excel in the workplace, or even to contribute at the best level that they can. The case features a fictitious letter written from the perspective of a Black manager to a white boss explaining the tension and stress they feel. The letters describe how it feels to be Black employees. Written from the heart, they talk about how they feel alienated and that they are expected to be the official interpreters for other Black people in the workplace. They also feel like they’re always on the spot, being held personally culpable for every situation involving Black people in the workplace. It’s as if they are the authority on race relations just for being Black.

Even though it’s an older case, I enjoy teaching it because every year there’s something going on that makes this relevant. This semester, what I did differently online is I had students write their own letters and post them to the discussion forum. My students wrote over 100 letters, whether to a fictitious boss or a real one, and I found it useful to see how my 20- to 21-year-old students are experiencing race right now, especially when race is salient for them. It also prepares them for some of the issues that they may face as new entrants into the workforce.

It’s interesting because the majority of my students are not Black, so most of these letters were written by white students—giving them a voice on a subject that they may not otherwise be asked about and an opportunity to speak up about how management should be handling issues around race.

Because the letters are posted to the discussion board, students get to see every other student’s letter and comment. They give feedback to each other on the content of their letters and see how other students who are not like themselves feel about what the most important issues are around race in their organization.

I then take the letters and put them in a word cloud, which allows me to look visually at what students believe are the most important issues in a workplace around diversity, equity, and inclusion. In an online setting, it’s hard to create engagement, but this allows students to see what their classmates are really thinking and feeling. We would never have been able to do that during in-person class time—in 75 minutes, you might hear from a few students with big voices. Doing this online, students have been able to participate extensively.”

6. Unilever’s New Global Strategy: Competing Through Sustainability

Christopher A. Bartlett, Thomas D. Casserly, Jr. Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus, Harvard Business School

Excerpted from Professor Bartlett’s Inside the Case video :

“To be honest, I never intended to write this case. I think this case found me. I’d already retired after writing 100 or more teaching notes and cases and other pedagogic material. I was reading a Harvard Business Review article titled ‘Captain Planet,’ and it was an interview with Paul Polman, who had recently been appointed CEO of Unilever. Paul made some passionate statements, such as, ‘I want to double sales at Unilever by 2020,’ and, ‘I want to halve our carbon footprint at the same time.’ Then to my great amusement, he said, ‘And by the way, I don’t want any hedge funds investing.’ He wanted long-term investors who were sympathetic to and supportive of what he was trying to do. So, I thought, this is an interesting company and an interesting guy. I learned a huge amount and had a great deal of fun writing this case, and I hope you learn as much and have as much fun teaching it.”

“When it comes to the challenge of keeping Zoom-fatigued students engaged in online learning, this case gives you a lot of opportunities to keep them engaged and involved. There’s 13 minutes of video that can be introduced at four stages through the lesson. There’s also, up early, opportunities for breakouts around the role playing—the four role-playing roles can assemble in breakout groups and then come back into the main discussion.

At the end of the class, there is a decision—students choose which of three options they should decide on. And again, this is a perfect opportunity to bring in online polling. So, it will enrich and give variety to the teaching plan that’s outlined in the teaching note.”

Additional comments from Professor Bartlett on how his approach changed in teaching the case online:

“One of the main differences in online case teaching is recognizing the reality of Zoom fatigue. One effective way to respond is to bring more pedagogic variety into the class to reengage attention and drive discussion. In-class video supplements have long provided such a powerful way to enrich the classroom experience, and now online tools such as breakout rooms and online polling offer additional ways to keep students engaged and to energize discussion.”

7. Showrooming at BestBuy

Chen Lin, Assistant Professor of Marketing, CEIBS

“My favorite case to teach online is Showrooming at BestBuy . Of course, this is a classic case with a well-defined question, strong theoretical support, and a good execution outcome that is great to teach whether you’re online, offline, or hybrid. We have to be sympathetic that online students this year have lots to deal with in their lives—so picking a case that’s simple, prevalent, and easy enough for them to understand the question (even if they don’t have time to fully read and digest the case) is an important first step to ensuring a successful discussion.

I did need to make some adjustments to teach this case online. Previously, in in-person settings, I would come up to students and randomly pick them to role play—either as the BestBuy manager, the price-sensitive customer, the supplier, or the Amazon manager. Students would often jump in to help their peers (‘Oh, I would also do X’ or ‘No, that’s not going to work’). In an online setting, because the communication process is more sequential than simultaneous, we lose these important dynamics if we don’t play up these subtle classroom rapports. So, it’s important to give students a few extra minutes for breakout discussion to put together their thoughts in a cohesive structure.

To teach this case online, I use Zoom’s poll function and breakout rooms. I don’t just use pre-set polls; I also create live polls on the spot. For example, ‘Student A’s point is interesting. Do you agree with their proposal that we should reduce the size of the showroom?’ The flow looks more natural using polls this way, and students get a chance to further develop their arguments. Good-paced polls and breakout sessions also help the online students direct their attention back every 15 to 20 minutes.

In short, one of the biggest differences of teaching cases online is that we need to find creative ways to chop long, sequential, one-way communication arguments into short, interactive, group-based responses. Digital tools such as polls and breakout rooms help, but more important is choosing a case that is conducive to facilitating a simple design of paced interactions.”

8. Benevento Foods: When the Rubber Hits the Dough

David Wood, Faculty Member, Ivey Business School

“For most of us, case teaching was exclusively an in-person practice until March of 2020. Fortunately, we have learned that online case teaching can be equally as effective when adaptations are made to a traditional teaching plan. Benevento Foods is a good example of the potential for an online case learning experience. I use this case to introduce my students to quality management.

Now online, I have replaced traditional readings with videos and activities so students can practice the key concepts that they need in order to analyze the case. Students then work together in their learning teams to complete the quantitative analysis before discussing the case asynchronously. With a good understanding of the basics, the synchronous class can focus on the more challenging aspects of quality management—people. I use the responses from students to offer an opportunity for peer-to-peer learning. I use random breakout rooms to dive deeper into the root cause of the problem. And students help each other by posting and sharing their completed models and analyses. Class is lively and full of those precious ‘aha moments’ just like when we were back on campus. Then, when class concludes, students go online to complete their learning journals, where they record their most important takeaways from Benevento Foods. ”

9. Dollar Shave Club

Karin Kollenz-Quetard, Professor of Strategy and Innovation, EDHEC Business School

“Hi, my name is Karen Kollenz, and I’m a teacher of strategy and innovation at EDHEC Business School in France. My favorite case to teach online is Dollar Shave Club . Why? Well, there are three reasons.

First, it’s a highly versatile case; I teach it in my strategy courses and in my innovation courses. And I know from colleagues that they teach it in marketing and entrepreneurship. You can teach it to all kinds of audiences. I teach it mainly with master level students, MBAs, but also with executive audiences. And I know of a colleague who has discussed the case with undergrad audiences. And last but not least, it can be adapted to different lengths. I’ve used it in one-and-a-half-hour sessions, but I’ve also used it as the basis for six hours of discussion with executives. Of course, if you talk about it for a day, you go a little bit beyond the case. So that means for us teachers, we prepare one case and we can use it in many different courses and with many different audiences.

The second reason why I like Dollar Shave Club is because it’s highly interactive. Basically, it’s super easy with this case to change the topic and the activity every 15 minutes, which I believe is really necessary for online teaching. I do use polls; I do use quizzes, mainly with Socrative, but I’ve also tried Poll Everywhere. And for short voting, I use “hand up” or the polls that are included in Zoom or Blackboard Collaborate. I also do breakout groups—at least one every one-and-a-half hours. Sometimes I do short buzz groups in addition to that, where I send students to discuss a topic for two to five minutes.

And the third reason why I love Dollar Shave Club is it’s just fun to teach. We laugh a lot in class; the advertisements for Dollar Shave Club are just hilarious. I have not seen a single student who doesn’t love watching these ads. And everybody can relate to shaving, so it’s really easy to start a discussion.

What have I changed when moving it online? Well, I think one of the main things I changed was the videos I used to show in class. That doesn’t really work perfectly in an online setting. So now I share the links in the chat, and the students watch the videos individually. Of course, as with every case, there are more planned interactions with all students using polls, quizzes, etc., as I already mentioned, which is the case for anything that you move from face to face to online. So, don’t hesitate to contact me if you think I can help you in teaching Dollar Shave Club .”

10. Uber Africa: Making Cash and Alternative Payments Work in Kenya Through Contextual Leadership

Caren B. Scheepers, Associate Professor, University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science

“I love to teach my Uber case online, whether MBA or MPhil or executive education (corporate programs). I coauthored two cases on Uber, one about Uber in Kenya, where customers’ reluctance to use credit cards resulted in a cash option and mobile money option that had to be designed, and another one on Uber South Africa’s business-model innovation response to COVID-19. I have brought in the CEO to be a guest speaker online, and the students loved it.

Another case that I love to teach is one that won the European Foundation for Case Management (EFMD) award for the best written case in Africa. It’s about SweepSouth , an electronic platform for domestic workers, which is a commercial organization with a social value creation focus. Students identify with this platform easily too, since we call it the “Uber of domestic workers,” and it works well in teaching my class entitled Contextualizing Women Entrepreneurship.

Both of these cases demonstrate the strength of the sharing economy and the impact on the triple bottom line, especially for Uber, with its sharing of rides having a positive impact on conserving our planet.

I also make a point of writing and teaching cases where the protagonist is a Black man or Black woman to balance the focus on cases with white male protagonists. ( SweepSouth features a mixed-race female entrepreneur).”

Karthik Ramanna is a professor of business and public policy at the University of Oxford, where he is also director of the Oxford MPP and of the Oxford Case Centre on Public Leadership. He was previously on the faculty of Harvard Business School.

Laura Huang is an associate professor of business administration in the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School. Prior to joining HBS, she was an assistant professor of management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Her research examines early-stage entrepreneurship, and the role of interpersonal relationships and implicit factors in the investment decisions of financiers such as angel investors and VCs.

Anna A. Tavis is a professor and academic director of the Human Capital Management Department at NYU School of Professional Studies, senior fellow with the Conference Board, and the academic in residence with Executive Networks. She was named for inclusion in Thinkers50 Radar for 2020.

Mihir A. Desai is the Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance at Harvard Business School and a professor of law at Harvard Law School. His areas of expertise include tax policy, international finance, and corporate finance.

Meredith Burnett is a professorial lecturer in the Kogod School of Business at American University. Her research and teaching interests are in the areas of organizational behavior and human resource management, and her research examines how individual differences and human resource policies interact to influence employee behavior. She is particularly interested in examining how these factors influence outcomes such as employee retention and employee knowledge sharing.

Christopher A. Bartlett is the Thomas D. Casserly, Jr. Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School. As a practicing manager prior to HBS, he worked as a marketing manager with Alcoa in Australia, as a management consultant in McKinsey’s London office, and as the country general manager of Baxter Laboratories’ subsidiary company in France. His research interests after joining HBS in 1979 focused on the strategic and organizational challenges confronting managers in large, complex corporations, and on the organizational and managerial impact of transformational change.

Chen Lin is an assistant professor of marketing at CEIBS and a former assistant professor of marketing at the Eli Broad College of Business, Michigan State University. Her research interests include digital and social media, internet marketing, and empirical marketing models. She has taught marketing research, digital marketing, and business technology innovation at the EMBA, EED, and MBA levels, and has been a marketing columnist for SINA Finance , Forbes , and Economist EIU.

David Wood is a member of the faculty in operations management at Ivey Business School, as well as a graduate of both the HBA and MBA programs. He spent many years in industry as the director of sales and marketing and then as vice president of manufacturing before becoming president for W. C. Wood Company, a global manufacturer of home appliances. He has written many cases on process design, quality management, and operations strategy. Wood is the coauthor of a series of books on learning with cases and writing cases, and he has won a number of teaching awards, including the David G. Burgoyne Teaching Award and Outstanding Case Teacher from The Case Centre.

Karin Kollenz-Quetard is professor of strategy and innovation at EDHEC Business School, and she also intervenes in customized programs at other business schools such as London Business School (UK) and HEC (France). She develops and delivers face-to-face and online executive-management development programs and keynotes with a focus on strategy and innovation. In December 2016, Karin was named one of the world’s leading business school professors by Financial Times .

Caren B. Scheepers is an associate professor at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS), University of Pretoria. She lectures on strategic implementation, MBA electives titled Contextual Leadership Intelligence and Diversity and Inclusion (Identity Work), and on strategic leadership on the MPhil in corporate strategy. She also developed and is hosting a GIBS Online Strategic Leadership course. She is also passionate about executive education programs and supporting companies in their strategy execution.

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Case Studies in Business, Management, and Organizations

Case studies - full text as part of library subscription.

• Sage Business Cases This link opens in a new window SAGE Business Cases is a digital collection of business cases tailored to library needs – providing faculty, students and researchers with unlimited access to more than 4,850 authoritative cases from over 120 countries. SAGE curates interdisciplinary cases on in-demand subjects such as entrepreneurship, accounting, healthcare management, leadership, social enterprise, and more. Publishing partners include Yale University, Kellogg School of Management, Society of Human Resource Management, and more. For Instructors: additional teaching note material is available; Before creating an account, please contact the library for more information on how to access this content.
• HS Talks Business & Management Collection This link opens in a new window Specially commissioned talks from leading experts in industry, commerce, the professions and academia. The collection also includes 20 peer reviewed vocational journals.

Case Studies - summary collections available at low/no cost

• Business Source Premier --Abstracts for Harvard Business School Case Studies from 1942 to the present are available as part of Business Source Premier. Full text of the case is not available.
• Harvard Business School Case Studies The case method forms the basis of learning at Harvard Business School. It is a method designed to provide an "immersion" experience, challenging students by bringing them as close as possible to the business situations of the real world. Harvard Business School Publishing makes these cases and related materials available to improve and enhance business education around the world. They are available to purchase online for around $7.00.
• Case Depositories Page at GlobalEdge This section of the GlobalEdge database provides information about publishers or depositories of cases. Some sites list cases by that institution. Other sites act as clearinghouses and feature cases from a variety of sources.
• LearningEdge The case studies available on LearningEdge are teaching case studies, narratives that facilitate class discussion about a particular business or management issue.
• Darden Case Collection The Darden case collection provides numerous business and management case studies.
• European Case Clearing House The Clearing House distributes the European Collection from the Babson College Office including case collections of IMD, INSEAD, IESE, London Business School, Cranfield School of Management, Babson College and cases from independent authors. Cases cost about $3.50.
• Kellogg School of Management Case Study Abstracts The Kellogg School of Management is making available to academic practitioners and corporate trainers selected cases and teaching materials, developed by Kellogg faculty and taught in the Kellogg classroom. Information on how to order the case studies is included on the web site.
• Stanford Graduate School of Business Case Studies Abstracts This database contains abstracts and ordering information for case studies written and published by the Stanford Graduate School of Business. You may search by authors name, title, keyword, etc. Most cases in this collection are distributed by Harvard Business School Publishing and you will find a link to the HBSP site to place your order. Contact them for availability of other cases.
• Case Research Journal Available in Print: Case research journal. Published: [United States] : The North American Case Research Association (NACRA), 1980--present. Availability: TC Wilson Periodicals --Basement The Index to the cases in the print journal is available at the link shown above. This site from the North American Case Research Association also shows how to purchase the cases available in the journal.
• NASPAA Publicases Publicases is an online repository and marketplace developed by NASPAA (Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration) as platform connecting students and faculty in public affairs schools around the world with simulations, case studies, data, and other experiential learning opportunities. Currently, case content is developed by the Evans School and the Humphrey School and is available without charge to member schools.

Writing Case Studies - teaching and research

Find Case Studies in Books by using  MNCAT :

• Search for a subject term, such as marketing, and add the phrase: case studies. See below for examples:
• Books on the case method: Search our  MNCAT  catalog using the subject term:  Case method.