Teaching With Cases: My 1H 2025 Usage Report
This week I’m teaching incoming Kellogg students about case studies. Why do we use them? How can you get the most from the discussions?
As a result, I’ve been thinking about case studies. Today’s post is the first of three on the topic. Next week I’ll post my top 10 cases and the week after I’ll dig into the process of finding and learning a new case.
Writing Cases
Case studies are a core part of business education. If you’ve been to business school or are a business executive, you’ve likely read and discussed cases. When I went to Harvard Business School, all we did was case studies.
A case study is simply a description of a situation. Sometimes a case will be about a well-known brand, like Starbucks or Nike. More often, the case is focused on an industry like industrial gaskets or medical imaging systems, businesses where most students don’t have a base of knowledge.
When everyone in a class reads a case, they all have similar information to work with. This sets up a discussion. In the perfect discussion, things unfold in a surprising way, in the process bringing to life some timeless business lessons.
I’ve written perhaps two dozen cases over the years, and these are all available for instructors to use through Harvard Business School Publishing, apparently now renamed Harvard Business School Impact; (a pretty debatable move).
1H Case Usage Report
This week I received my case sales data for the first half of 2025. It is an interesting document.
I’m happy to report that twenty of my cases were used in the first half of the year, in schools including UCLA, Penn State, Pepperdine, Yale, IIT Calcutta and King’s College London.
My most used case was Hoopes Vision, an interesting case about a LASIK surgeon dealing with aggressive price competition. This was followed by a defensive strategy case, Lawry’s – A1 Steak Sauce. This case naturally breaks into discussion points for the instructor, making it very easy to use: spend 10 minutes on this question, then 10 minutes on the next question, then 10 minutes on an exercise….
A series of healthcare cases came next: FluMist, Gardasil, Synvisc and others.
I was surprised to see considerable use of a case I wrote on Taco Bell’s Breakfast Line. I’m not teaching that case currently in my classes, but perhaps I should revisit that. Clearly some people are finding that it works well.
My most used item was actually “Note on Writing Great Marketing Plans.” This is a pretty short and crisp piece on creating practical, useful plans.
Some of my older cases are selling the best. This makes sense; once an instructor finds a case that fits in a class and then figures out how to teach it in an interesting way, there is a huge incentive to stick with it.
Steinway
My newest case is Crescendo: Steinway’s Growth Strategy.
I think Steinway is a fascinating brand: a global icon with tiny sales. It is a great case for teaching brand positioning, competitive strategy, brand portfolio strategy and growth.
I used to teach a Harvard case on Steinway. This worked very well, but eventually the case was just too old. Students like newer cases, so while it is possible to use an old case on occasion, a course full of old cases can seem out of date.
In 2023, Steinway was planning for an IPO so released a lot of financial information. I used all this information to write the case. The result is a case that is new, interesting and relevant.
I’m gradually learning how to teach the case well. I find that it might take five or ten class sessions to really learn how to manage the class discussion: where to spend the time, what to ask students, and when to move on. The more I work with this case the better it seems to flow.
If you are an instructor and interested in learning about the case (or any of my cases), just let me know. I’m happy to share my teaching plan and slides, in addition to the teaching note available at HBS.
The Next Case
I’m not working on a new case at the moment, but if you see a fun situation unfolding please let me know! The best cases are timeless and debatable. A case on whether or not Apple should launch the iPhone isn’t going to be too interesting. The answer is yes.
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