Rihanna brings in the sheaves

Here is my stab at a case in 50 words (see yesterday's blog).

You head Northern Ireland tourist board.

Tourism @ 4.9% GDP = £529m+40,000 jobs.  Film @£112m over 4 years. Farmer’s faith disrupts Rihanna video .

Farmer is local alderman but global news makes country look backward to tourists.  Production companies concerned about disruption.  You are called to attend government committee.

?

Short cases or long cases?

I sometimes get involved in arguments over the merits of long cases versus short.  Some claim only long cases are capable of rendering the complexity of decision-making into the classroom.  Well, look at how complex and rich the best poetry is.  If a good working definition of poetry is 'the best words in the best order', then the same might apply to a case, regardless of length.

Participants at Start Writing Cases, 3-4 April 2012 at VU University Amsterdam are sure to ask the question 'how long is long enough?'  I wonder if the answer could be 50 words or less?  If anyone cares to accept the challenge of writing a case in 50 words or less, send it to me and we'll see where we get.  I'll have a go myself and post it in my next blog.

And if you're interested in finding out more about 'Start Writing Cases', a practical and intensive workshop giving 12 inexperienced case writers the opportunity to take time out to work on an idea for a case, then visit  www.ecch.com/startwritingcases2012  for more.

Education, education, education

Last night's high profile launch of HBSP's new European office featured ex-Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell and Sir Michael Rake, chairman of BT in conversation with Adi Ignatius, editor of Harvard Business Review.  The two interviewees disagreed most about education - though neither challenged the conventional view that 'too many people study the wrong subjects'.  So, once again, our present predicament is the fault of arts and humanities graduates who can turn their hands to the business of making neither things nor money.  Personally?  I'm all for them.  If more investors had taken Eng Lit read The Alchemist or Volpone they might have been less inclined to believe rates too good to believe, and History graduates may have warned that dot.com had all the hallmarks of the South Sea Bubble.  Let's have more, not less, in the mix.   (and while we're at it - how about the case study as a work of literature?)