"Cases can be useful and informative, but recognize that they aren't reality. The companies featured typically require that the case writer submit the case to them for approval. That introduces survivor bias-whoever is still around at the time of publication gets to dictate how the narrative is told. Another issue is that the companies selected and held up as exemplars are subject to the halo effect. This is the tendency to believe that because a company was successful, copying its practices will create success elsewhere."
"Unfortunately, the iron law of transient advantage is hard to escape. The 1995 Dell case doesn't hold up so well. A 2002 case about Nokia centered on how the successful phone company was going to deal with the €8 billion in cash piling up in its accounts. And don't even get me started on the 618 (!) cases that feature the General Electric Corporation."
"In it, passengers scramble through a jungle, climbing over each other in a chaotic race to grab seats. The tagline? "That was wild. Assigned seating is here." The ad was intended (I think) to indulge in gentle mockery of the past. I found it jarring. Herb Kelleher, the airline's colorful co-founder, would have been horrified, I think. I last met with him (over a Wild Turkey bourbon, of course) at the Strategic Management Society Meetings in 2004"
The business case study method began at Harvard Business School in 1921 and became standard there in the 1920s. Harvard now dominates the market, selling cases to over 4,000 rival schools. Cases can provide useful information but do not equal reality because companies frequently approve case drafts, producing survivor bias and curated narratives. The halo effect leads observers to assume that copying practices of successful firms will produce similar results. The iron law of transient advantage renders many classic cases outdated, with examples including Dell, Nokia, and hundreds of cases on General Electric. Popular admiration can obscure changes in corporate culture, as seen with Southwest Airlines.
Read at Fast Company
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]