Case Center Japan and Harvard Business Publishing empower case method educators

Last year, Harvard Business School Publishing (HBP) celebrated the 100th anniversary of its first business case, "General Shoe Company.” Today, 15 million cases are sold each year from case collections in many places, including top business schools such as HBS, Ivey, and Darden. This is because the case method is a powerful learning tool that, when employed effectively, can build a wide variety of soft skills  necessary for 21st century managers, including thinking, insight, speaking, negotiating, listening, storytelling, and selling.

In order to empower educators and case method practitioners to master the art and science of case method teaching, three of our faculty members (Prof. Ricardo Lim, Prof. Frendy, and Prof. Ray Hui) held a seminar for Case Center Japan in cooperation with Harvard Business Publishing to demystify the techniques behind managing a participant-centered learning environment.

After delivering a lecture and facilitating a discussion based on a case provided by Harvard Business Publishing, participants close to home, such as faculty members joining from NUCB International College, joined others from as far away as Africa, such as faculty from Moroccan partner school ESCA School of Management, to weigh in on their takeaways from the session. "Humor can be a powerful tool in the classroom, but it can also be dangerous in this day and age" remarked one participant about the pitfalls of joking around with students. Others spoke on the importance of in-class notation, and highlighting contrasting viewpoints in order to spur deeper explorations.

Our school employs case method in all of its classes, and champions the innovative teaching style as the primary mode by which our MBA empowers future leaders. Democratizing the classroom and putting the learning into participants' hands not only teaches students an important lesson about the value they bring to a team; it instills the confidence necessary to realize the potential of great ideas.