When I did my MBA many moons ago I had to comply with the fashion of the Business Case Study. If it was a Harvard one, surely it came in blessed with the pedigree. I had a hard time with the fashion. I never understood the point. It detracted and distracted from teaching. The worst professors seemed to have more case studies. The worst was the ‘Part B’ or whatever it was called, when, alas, after endless brainstorming playing VPs of large corporations, the Part B actually told you what happened in reality. A bit of ‘the nominations are’ and ‘the winner is’. I could not find one single of these case studies relevant. Also, any journalist could have done a better job. And they don’t call it Reality Case or something like that… But I was not a standard MBA student. Stressed, with a big VP job, doing the MBA in ‘the spare time’ and other small domestic difficulties, I did not have great respect for the Case X of the German Car Industry (which for some reason seemed a recurrent theme that year!) Let me qualify. I did learn a lot about the German Car Industry. My final exam was a case about a small family owned farm in Italy. Neither of them told me a bit about day to day business reality. My Sunday newspaper won the competition by a long way.