Harvard Case Classroom. ©Natalie-Keyssar

This Is Why the Case Study Method Matters

What makes a businessperson successful?

According to Adrian Wooldridge, global business columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and author of The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World, it’s the ability to make sound judgement—especially in times of need.

“What makes a successful businessperson is not their brain power or command of theory. It is their ability to size up ambiguous situations — emerging technologies, nascent markets, complex investment instruments — and then make a sensible judgment under pressure,” Wooldridge writes. “This ability to produce sound judgments is becoming more important as politics intrudes even deeper into business life and managers are being obliged to make difficult trade-offs between commercial logic and political pressure and between various rival constituencies.”

HUMANITY & BUSINESS THINKING

The practice of making sound judgement, in many ways, is tied to the core of Harvard Business School’s case study teaching method. That’s because the case study method relies heavily on discussion.

“Across the cases they study, students get feedback from their classmates and their teachers about when their decisions are more or less compelling,” Nitin Nohria, the former dean of Harvard Business School, writes for the Harvard Business Review. “It enables them to develop the judgment of making decisions under uncertainty, communicating that decision to others, and gaining their buy-in — all essential leadership skills. Leaders earn respect for their judgment. It is something students in the case method get lots of practice honing.”

This year, HBS celebrates the 100th anniversary of the case study teaching method. And there’s a lot to celebrate. For one, Wooldridge says, the case study puts humanity back at the heart of business thinking.

“It introduces students to the extraordinary variety of business organizations. It shows that choices are always open-ended,” Wooldridge writes.  “The objective facts of the business case — the structure of the industry or the flow of capital — may constrain the choices available, but it can never determine them entirely. And it demonstrates that half the battle lies in persuading your colleagues (or in this case fellow classmates) that you’ve made the right decision.”

Sources: Bloomberg Opinion, Harvard Business Review, Harvard Business School