How to Business Aside: Call for Cases

I'd like to take a pause from the "How to Business" series to make a request of you, the reader. See, in business school, the primary vehicle of learning is the "case". A case is a situation drawn from real life, selected because it is illustrative of certain business concepts, and then written up by fancy professors (usually from Harvard) to highlight the most teachable stuff and downplay the rest.

Now, I'm far from being able to write a real case, but I think we can all still benefit from some of the methodology. The idea is that theory matters very little in business, and results matter a ton. Also, business issues are complex and rely on the entire context, not just on one or two easily separated elements. So, cases are supposed to be exercise for your business acumen muscles - a way to practice being a manager making crucial decisions with limited information.

Honestly, they're pretty fun.  It's a bit like a business roleplaying scenario, except with a written "Adventure" and no referee. In school, the usual format is to write up or otherwise prepare your response to the case before a guided discussion in class.

So I am here requesting cases from y'all. Have a business issue you want examined? Let me know. Have a specific roleplaying game business episode you want dissected for great learning? Even better. Non-roleplaying related stuff is of course welcome, but given the nature of the blog, I'd prefer gaming-related stuff.

We'll do some back and forth discussion to figure out the best way to present it, and then after wrapping up the series, I'll post the results here.