In case method, opening a case for discussion in class is a must-have experience. Every student is expected to open a case atleast a few times in his/her MBA. Further more, if you get that chance through a cold call it is an even better ( or worse) experience depending on whether you pull it off or mess it up. It was not a cold call for me today when I opened the Marketing Management case today but I got bashed very badly. It would be more appropriate if I had used the f-word instead of bashed. All case openings in the past two weeks have just been paraphrasing the case facts after which the floor is opened for others. The case I opened was a very small case and there was no big solution or strategy to come up with. What happened was given and according to me it was just a discussion on “Competitive Forces”. First, Professor Cruz gave a chance and just when I was about to start he stopped me and asked “ before you start What do you think is the conceptual topic ? ”. First hit. I was searching for some jargon expecting it wont be as simple as competition or competitive forces and couldn’t manage one and was sitting with a blank face. The only consolation was that nobody answered it correctly until the professor almost spitted it out.
The focus then came back to me and he gave me a go ahead to open the case. I wanted to make it up for my hiccup and make the opening as comprehensive as possible and cover all the case facts. I did that pretty well, concluded with my thoughts and was pretty happy. But Professor Cruz was not done yet. He asked me who was my friend in class and I said “everybody” . Then he pointed one guy and asked me whether he was my friend. I said “yes” and he turned back to him and asked him “whether I added any value apart from paraphrasing the case facts”. I went blue. All the case openings in the past weeks have been the same as mine but he chose to do this with the unlucky me. He came back to me to ask whether I thought I added some value or not. I said yes and even fairly justified it. He was a bit convinced but I clearly understood the impression that he got of me through this case opening, that I am just empty talk. Incidents like this happen everyday and in every class and there are embarrassing moments for everybody. But there are learnings from each. This is the second week and we have just done around 10 cases but I am not sure whether we are taking them as cases. We deal with them more as problems or puzzles rather than cases. We don’t involve the business angle at all. We just use our imagination and fail to apply any business concepts or methodology to it. In this case I and my study group didn’t discuss anything that was beyond the case facts. We shun theory and that was the reason for my screw up. Professor Cruz is very good in this and the way he drives a case discussion to explain a concept is damn good. So any class participation which doesnt add value to the discussion is just gibberish.
Got to learn some things the hard way.
The focus then came back to me and he gave me a go ahead to open the case. I wanted to make it up for my hiccup and make the opening as comprehensive as possible and cover all the case facts. I did that pretty well, concluded with my thoughts and was pretty happy. But Professor Cruz was not done yet. He asked me who was my friend in class and I said “everybody” . Then he pointed one guy and asked me whether he was my friend. I said “yes” and he turned back to him and asked him “whether I added any value apart from paraphrasing the case facts”. I went blue. All the case openings in the past weeks have been the same as mine but he chose to do this with the unlucky me. He came back to me to ask whether I thought I added some value or not. I said yes and even fairly justified it. He was a bit convinced but I clearly understood the impression that he got of me through this case opening, that I am just empty talk. Incidents like this happen everyday and in every class and there are embarrassing moments for everybody. But there are learnings from each. This is the second week and we have just done around 10 cases but I am not sure whether we are taking them as cases. We deal with them more as problems or puzzles rather than cases. We don’t involve the business angle at all. We just use our imagination and fail to apply any business concepts or methodology to it. In this case I and my study group didn’t discuss anything that was beyond the case facts. We shun theory and that was the reason for my screw up. Professor Cruz is very good in this and the way he drives a case discussion to explain a concept is damn good. So any class participation which doesnt add value to the discussion is just gibberish.
Got to learn some things the hard way.
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