I’ve been working on how to structure cases, and I’d like your view on a problem I've noticed.
My observation: almost every case type comes down to the same three questions: what’s the market situation, will this be profitable, and can the business actually do it. Market, profitability and operations. It’s the same framework with different emphasis.
- Profitability: the weight is on Profitability, with the market and operational risks as context.
- Market entry: focus on market first, then profitability, then operation considerations.
- M&A: same thing, but more math on acquisition cost and return.
- Operations: focus on operations, then financial considerations and whether the market justifies the change.
Example: Company A manufactures and ships its own products in two versions, a regular one and a premium one (the premium one was recently launched). It sells through vendors, who then sells to customers.
Profits have declined over the last 02 years. Find the cause and recommend actions.
Different ways to structure it:
- Generic framework: market landscape/competitive scene, profitability, operations.
- By stakeholder: the company, the vendors, and the end customers. The key question becomes whether the problem is in what vendors buy from us or what end customers buy from vendors.
- By process: materials, manufacturing, vendor management, shipping and sales, to find any bottleneck/change in process that caused declining profitability.
- By product: regular versus premium, then break into profitability/operations.
- By timing: before versus after the premium product launched/profitability declined, broken into market changes, consumer demand changes, vendor changes, etc.
I think they all work. They are basically the same components re-arranged.
Dilemma:
- If I use the generic framework, interviewers might perceive it as reciting the casebook
- If I commit to a specific lens, it feels unnatural at times, and could even backfire if it's the wrong direction (the problem might be something else, no data from interviewer to give)
- Clarifying questions don’t reliably fix this. There are many possible causes, and the interviewer often says “we’ll discuss that later" anyway.
The real trade-off is coverage vs customizability. The more I cover, the more generic I sound. The more I try to customize, the more I might leave out.
My questions:
- Is a generic structure that covers everything as bad as people say, or do interviewers not care?
- Is customizability the priority, and what happens if it ends up pointing the wrong way?
Thank you!
