Harvard Business School Case Method

[Loren Swaggr]

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For a week, we studied at Harvard Business School (HBS), experiencing first-hand what it meant to earn an MBA from one of the top business schools in the world. Sitting in one of the lecture halls, looking around at my cohort, I knew this would be a life-changing week.

Harvard is a world class institution because of its people. Not just the outstanding students, but the professors, faculty, and staff. The professors, who are experts in their field, kept students engaged, provoked discussion, and shared their knowledge.

I felt challenged every day. In one of my classes, we met two HBS alums, Kurt and Helen Summers, who married shortly after graduation and shared their story. The case study we read followed the life of Kurt Summers, who grew up on the South Side of Chicago and launched a successful career on Wall Street before becoming Treasurer of the City of Chicago. They encouraged us to share our defining life moments with our classmates. Although I just met everyone, I felt comfortable sharing and the case study gave us the opportunity to get to know each other better.

I loved learning about everyone in my cohort. One student interned in Human Resources at the Taj Mahal, another started a protein bar company, and others traveled the world. We will continue to stay close and may even attend HBS together in the future.

When I applied to college almost four years ago, I never seriously considered going to an Ivy League school. One of my mentors encouraged me to apply to Yale, but I did so without strong intentions and did not get accepted.

However, for this SVMP experience, I was accepted. I wondered if someone like me could thrive here, and after my first class, I knew I could. With strict admission standards and a record of distinction, Harvard has high expectations for their students. Learning in that environment motivated me to set goals that will help me to attain an MBA from HBS and drive the impact I want to have as a leader.

The case method is designed so that students learn from each other. Since everyone comes from different backgrounds, the conversations are rich and diverse with a wide range of perspectives. Professors guide the discussion with probing questions and challenge students to support their views.

Harvard is known as the best for a reason. In one week here, I gained knowledge and experience that will guide my future. A huge thank you to all the people who made this program possible, Anita Elberse, Peter Sloane, HBS Admissions and faculty, and my sponsor organization Google.

Bold ideas developed by world-class researchers working with real-world practitioners, and a powerful pedagogy built around participant-centered learning in highly structured, interactive engagements.

This academic year, Harvard Business School is celebrating the 100-year anniversary of the introduction of the case method. Learn more about the past, present, and future of this groundbreaking learning approach.

The 2021-22 academic year marks the 100-year anniversary of the introduction of the case method at Harvard Business School. Today, the HBS case method is employed in the HBS MBA program, in Executive Education programs, and in dozens of other business schools around the world. As Dean Srikant Datar's says, the case method has withstood the test of time.

"Langdell conceived of a way to systematize and simplify legal education by focusing on previous case law that furthered principles or doctrines. To that end, Langdell wrote the first casebook, entitled A Selection of Cases on the Law of Contracts, a collection of settled cases that would illuminate the current state of contract law. Students read the cases and came prepared to analyze them during Socratic question-and-answer sessions in class." With the case method, pedagogical emphasis shifted from facts and theories to practical situations and outcomes. This shift was part of a larger cultural movement toward instrumentalism and pragmatism that engaged philosophers such as John Dewey.

Law students could practice skills they would need in the courtroom, while also absorbing the outcomes-the settled case law-that they would have to draw on as practicing lawyers. Rather than just absorbing facts and ideas presented by a professor, students could analyze a real-life situation. And rather than listening passively to a lecture, they could discuss and debate the situation from different perspectives.

The transition was not easy; in fact, many students quit Langdell's class. But with support from his dean, he persisted and the method caught on. A decade later, one Harvard Law School student who took note of this new teaching approach was Wallace Brett Donham.

The first business case, written by Clinton Biddle and published in 1921, was a one-page narrative about a management challenge facing leaders at the General Shoe Company. The case proved to be a very successful teaching tool, and many more cases followed.

To celebrate 100 years of the case method, we will be presenting reflections on this important teaching method on our website, Celebrating 100 years of Case Method Teaching & Learning. We invite you to:

It was through the leadership and vision of Donham that the case method was formally incorporated into the HBS curriculum. A graduate of Harvard Law School, lawyer, and HBS professor, Donham believed in the instructional value of placing students in the role of protagonists solving real-life business problems. He also recognized that while law schools could rely on centuries of common law cases, no such body of work existed for teaching business.

That's the first question that the majority of our perspective clients ask. We have several former HBS Admission Officers on our SBC consulting team, so we decided to gather HBS admit data across our client pool to define themes and strategies that can help future MBA applicants.

HBS is not the only elite business school to use this teaching style; UVA Darden and INSEAD do, too. But it did pioneer the practice more than a century ago. The reason it remains popular today is that the case method does an excellent job of building several core competencies, such as:

In the current climate, topics such as the future of AI, gender equality, and corporate culture are more important than ever. By exploring these issues in class discussions, Harvard Business School provides its students with valuable insights into how companies can navigate challenging situations while promoting open communication and inclusivity.

Just two of the many superstars on the SBC team:

Meet Anthony, who served as the Associate Director of MBA Admissions at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he dedicated over 10 years of expertise.

The case method is a teaching approach that uses decision-forcing cases to put students in the role of people who were faced with difficult decisions at some point in the past. It developed during the course of the twentieth-century from its origins in the casebook method of teaching law pioneered by Harvard legal scholar Christopher C. Langdell. In sharp contrast to many other teaching methods, the case method requires that instructors refrain from providing their own opinions about the decisions in question. Rather, the chief task of instructors who use the case method is asking students to devise, describe, and defend solutions to the problems presented by each case.[1]

The case method evolved from the casebook method, a mode of teaching based on Socratic principles pioneered at Harvard Law School by Christopher C. Langdell. Like the casebook method the case method calls upon students to take on the role of an actual person faced with a difficult problem.

A decision-forcing case is a kind of decision game. Like any other kinds of decision games, a decision-forcing case puts students in a role of person faced with a problem (often called the "protagonist") and asks them to devise, defend, discuss, and refine solutions to that problem. However, in sharp contrast to decision games that contain fictional elements, decision-forcing cases are based entirely upon reliable descriptions of real events.

A decision-forcing case is also a kind of case study. That is, it is an examination of an incident that took place at some time in the past. However, in contrast to a retrospective case study, which provides a complete description of the events in question, a decision-forcing case is based upon an "interrupted narrative." This is an account that stops whenever the protagonist finds himself faced with an important decision. In other words, while retrospective case studies ask students to analyze past decisions with the aid of hindsight, decision-forcing cases ask students to engage problems prospectively.[2]

Every decision-forcing case has a protagonist, the historical person who was faced with the problem or problem that students are asked to solve. Thus, in engaging these problems, students necessarily engage in some degree of role play.

Some case teachers, such as those of the Marine Corps University, place a great deal of emphasis on role play, to the point of addressing each student with the name and titles of the protagonist of the case. (A student playing the role of a king, for example, is asked "Your Majesty, what are your orders?") Other case teachers, such as those at the Harvard Business School, place less emphasis on role play, asking students "what would you do if you were the protagonist of the case."[5]

After discussing student solutions to the problem at the heart of a decision-forcing case, a case teacher will often provide a description of the historical solution, that is, the decision made by the protagonist of the case. Also known as "the rest of the story", "the epilogue", or (particularly at Harvard University) "the 'B' case", the description of the historical solution can take the form of a printed article, a video, a slide presentation, a short lecture, or even an appearance by the protagonist.

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