Perspectives on the Case Method

[Music] no matter how often you've taught a case no matter how often you taught or how much experience you have every time you go into the classroom there's a sense of anticipation for the unknown the classroom has this sort of bustling sort of crackling quiet energy and everyone's wondering who's going to get the cold ball today every single day you know it might happen it might come you can make a mistake or you don't have to have the right answer whatever you say the section is going to support you and yet the moment when the professor calls your name for that cold call it's kind of unlike any other jolt a professor will walk into the classroom and ask a student to start the discussion on a particular point of view what would you do if you were the protagonist in the case what our managers responsibilities to the societies in which they do business perchik why don't you get us started how did you vote I voted for humanitarian I thought about it in the three lines framework of ethical legal and economic the arguments in favor of him being humanitarian came out to be stronger they could afford to see their margins go down from 47% to something like 20 or 30% and still be able to offer these drugs at slightly lower prices what we try to do with the case method is bring as much of reality into the classroom as we can so the cases are 15 to 20 pages long they typically describe a complicated situation and a company where a manager has got to make a decision we've crafted the cases so you don't have complete information so you have to learn how to advocate and learn how to make decisions in the presence of incomplete information and it gives students ideally enough information so that they can put themselves in the shoes the protagonist they've got to think about the people they're working with the technology the industry the competition the overall economic environment the classroom is really sort of a culmination of a learning experience that actually starts from the moment that the students actually pick up their case assignment so my case preparation is generally a two-stage process to start it's a solitary exercise I read the case on my own I'm trying to take in as much information as I can we're reading cases you know from the med world from the tech world from the education world things that you haven't necessarily done and most students go through a period of thinking I must be the admissions mistake because look at all of these people that I'm around I think I've learned a lot from my classmates from their different backgrounds the way that they see the world their point of view shaped by their entire background and where they came from and you learn to see that there are a lot of different ways of looking at the same issue students are in learning teams or study groups where they share their ideas it's almost like a mini case study experience and that discussion group because we will challenge each other and we're very free about it it was interesting like the corporate culture we count on the diversity it's one of the things that we know even from research is that the more diversity you have the better problem-solving you have and that's what we see in a case discussion is you have better problem solving because of all the different kinds of people that we have in the class every professor not only knows your name but they know where you went to college where you're from throughout the class they're very much interested in your personal professional development before every class we have a meeting and the professor's discuss their ideas and their strategies for how that case might be taught we're missing an opportunity to introduce what's really going on in terms of culture and capitalism we spend some time talking about the substance of the case and sometimes talking about the best questions to ask in class you go into the class and you're quite ready to work your plan but then what you do is you then have to get ready to be really flexible and then to give up the plan so you you know this is coming next so like whoo where's the lot right right I mean there's you know too much um how would you even think about this you know it's it's it's all well and good to say all of governments NGOs whoever should be on top of it and alert the public when the markets failing when you have a situation where you have a tragedy Congress you can just imagine what it's like to sit in a room with 90 other people who are all they're committed to talk about a given subject to give in case like right megumi is that how it works in your experience with respect to malaria drugs and things like that one thought that came to my mind as Victoria was speaking is this issue of will the company be the one that takes responsibility and bare some of that cost so someone might say something particularly out of the box or off the wall you see all the hands in the classroom should have been really the twinkle and the professor's eye at that moment what extent do I just have an obligation to take off for tuna bees to make a change versus actually creating opportunities and going out of my way in a good class there is some amount of tension because let's face it these cases and the decisions the protagonist is having to make are tense and their trade-offs and they're tough in some sense I think of the classroom as a marketplace for ideas you have 90 really smart students in in a classroom debating their philosophies of leadership we do things differently here at Harvard Business School it's not the professor disseminating knowledge to the students it's everyone participating in the co-creation of knowledge it's definitely like a team environment and you sort of rely on the class to bring out the best discussion and everyone I think that the sense that we're all sort of responsible for each other's learning is something that just adds even further to this classroom experience I want them to think boy I walked in the class thinking I knew exactly what I do and I left thinking I'm not sure they don't need to have all the answers don't need to be Superman or woman it's okay to ask a question it's okay to say I don't know that's a good thing business education is not about finding the right answers it's about knowing what questions to ask and if we can facilitate a classroom environment where students learn how to ask the right questions that's where we want to be it's intense it's compassionate it's energetic it's a place where students learn by advocating their positions I think the job is really not done unless students are so enthused and so energized by what happens inside that classroom that they can't stop talking about it after the class is over you know it's a good class when we're all sharing the same breath when everyone is leaning forward when they there is an emotional roller coaster there is a narrative arc and by the end we just we feel like there's a crescendo because that's what transformational learning is all about it's not a transaction that happens in the classroom it's changing the way you look at the world [Applause] you

Channel: Harvard Business School

Views: 485,692

Keywords: case method, learning in practice, classroom, inside the case method, sandra sucher, rohit deshpande, karthik ramanna, rob kaplan, frances frei, joe badaracco

Id: Zp70pCiqcwk

Length: 7min 57sec (477 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 25 2013