Entrepreneurship? It ain't worth a thing if it ain't got that swing

Regular readers will know that I love jazz and have drawn comparisons between it and case writing/teaching as two great American art forms constantly reinvigorated by adoption and adaptation in the rest of the world.
Seems that business academics and practitioners can learn some wider lessons from jazz and how it's organised and led.  Research into entrepreneurial leadership at Warwick University says that entrepreneurs and leaders of entrepreneurial teams can learn a lot from how the jazz greats lead their ensembles.  Entrepreneurial Teams: Insights from Jazz by Deniz Ucbasaran, Mike Humphreys and Andy Lockett (any relation to the sax player Mornington Lockett?) won an award for best paper at the 2011 ISBE conference.
Now the story is running in the jazz press
A jazz setting would make for a great case study, maybe in the style of Raymond Chandler:

It was about eleven o'clock in the morning, mid October, with the sun not shining and a look of hard wet rain in the clearness of the foothills. I was wearing my powder-blue suit, with dark blue shirt, tie and display handkerchief, black brogues, black wool socks with dark little clocks on them. I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it. I was everything the well-dressed entrepreneur ought to be. I was calling on four million dollars. (adapted from the opening paragraph of The Big Sleep)

Now that's an opening.

Journal of Academic Writing

The European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing has just published the inaugural edition of the Journal of Academic Writing   The journal, which is international and peer reviewed, focuses on researching and debating best practices in the teaching of academic writing.  It's interdisciplinary but there is much that will be of interest to case writers including this article by Liz Cain and Ian Pople on writing practices in Business Studies.
Interestingly, those writers interviewed in the study make no reference to case writing, which led me to think about the status accorded to case writing in comparison to other forms of academic writing.  Case writers conduct and convert research into written accounts just as in other forms of academic publication, so what leads to their work being under reported even in studies specific to their subject area, where one would expect recognition of the form to be almost universal?
This peer reviewed journal is a welcome contribution to the academic study of the value that good writing brings to education.  Our annual awards for case writers make a contribution, of course, but we must find a way of doing more.

Reports of the death of the case study have been greatly exaggerated (again)

The launch of Harvard Business School's FIELD programme has led, though not by HBS itself, to some thoughts that the days of the case study may be numbered.  In fact HBS is building on the strengths of the case method by beefing up the student learning experience through a blend of cases (including those researched and written at its increasing number of overseas research centres) and the FIELD programme's immersive experiential learning.

That this could be taken to mean the end of the case method is a misunderstanding of what the case method is about.  Working through a case is not a poor replica of real life, and is not intended to be.  It is a different form of experience - rather like how watching sports or opera or the report of an international trade negotiation on television is different from being there, never mind experiencing it as a player, performer or diplomat.   Different but, in many respects, better. On television I get better angles of view, expert analysis and commentary and a much clearer picture of what is going on and why one team loses or wins, or a performer moves us or a negotiation is lost - something that often the players themselves or, more often, the losing managers, don't always know themselves.

In the same way, a good case study provides the clarity and analytical rigour for which real life doesn't allow time.  HBS is recognising this by retaining the mix of case study and experiential.  Reminds me more of Executive education, than a New Orleans band marching us to the grave of the case method.  

Going 100% cases

The ecch accessibility programme supports developing schools in their adoption and use of the case method, which is why I found this interview with Professor Hilda Amalraj, Dean at IBS Hyderabad, such an interesting read.  It's an account of her experience of the school changing to 100% case-based teaching and it highlights the demands the case method makes of faculty, students and administrators and the benefits it offers in return.  Faculty require support and development in growing their case research, writing and teaching skills while the school administration may struggle to fund both the provision of professional development and the cost of accessing cases.  But the rewards are high.  Students experience real decision making in the classroom using cases with both local and international perspectives.  Faculty writing cases engage with local business as they research and then write the case.  Theory is aligned with teaching practice.  Business communities benefit by interacting with faculty and the case can be used as an opportunity for self-reflection.  I believe the act of writing and teaching cases can stimulate interaction between schools and their local business communities to tthe benefit of both.

The ecch accessibility programme can help with professional development and affordable access to cases, working closely with case development centres around the world to make it much easier for all of us to access local cases written by authors within developing schools, reflecting a real understanding of the cultural and economic contexts within which business operates.

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?)