Biz Ed 'Oscars' Celebrate Leading Case Writers

by Stacy Blackman Consulting, Mar 15, 2014

Film actors weren't the only superstars lauded last week. The 2014 Case Centre Awards, an annual event known as the Oscars of business education, honored the professors who have written the most effective case studies.

The subjects highlighted through the winning cases give an insight into what is being taught in business school classrooms on a year-to-year basis.

IMD Professor Kamran Kashani and former IMD researcher Aime DuBrule won The Case Centre's Overall Award for 2014 with their case Value Selling at SKF Service (A): Tough Buyer Confronts Strategy.

Case-writing powerhouse Harvard Business School received the most prizes in the individual categories: Professors V. Kasturi Rangan and Sunru Yong, and Thomas Steenburgh, Jill Avery and Naseem Dahod won in the economics and marketing categories.

This year, topical world and economic issues are strongly represented: challenges in recession (SKFcomponent manufacturerand Coachluxury goods), banking under pressure (Deutsche Bank), and the impact of political events (Vodafone/Egypt).

The importance of emerging markets is also examined in banking (Alpen), healthcare devices (GE Healthcare/India) and white goods (Galanz/China). Social media is represented (HubSpot), medical devices and the challenges faced by a woman in leadership (Aesch), and food in a French entrepreneurial context (Michel et Augustin).

Though US business schoolsparticularly Harvard Business Schooldominate the market for case writing, European schools scooped most of the category awards, the Financial Times reports.

This years case awards and competitions honour case writing and teaching expertise on a global scale," says Richard McCracken, director of The Case Centre. "The Innovation in Case Teaching Award demonstrates how teaching expertise is being shared in Africa. We see how cases are able to respond fast to world events and get topical issues into the classroom."

Nirmalya Kumar, marketing professor at London Business School, received the award for Outstanding Contribution to the Case Method. His easyJet: The Webs Favourite Airline (co-authored at IMD with Brian Rogers) is The Case Centres bestselling case of all time, used by 133 schools in 32 countries since it was first published in 2000.

I am delighted to have received this recognition after many years of writing and teaching cases. In writing a case, I take both the instructor and student perspectives and ask how this case will lead to a transformation of beliefs on the part of the students, Kumar says.

The Case Centre is an independent, not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting the case method in business education. It also distributes the worlds largest collection of management case studies, articles and books on behalf of all the major business schools and internationally respected authors worldwide.

Follow the link for a complete list of the 2014 winners.

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