Hi!
If you want to become really strong in thinking through cases, forget about all these types listed in the books (market entry, product launch, m&a etc.) These categories are completely useless. At the core, there is only three types of cases (at least at the big MBB companies):
- Strategic decisions
- Diagnostics
- Brainstorming questions
Essentialy any business situation belongs into one of these types. Each type can be adressed with a set of fundamental first principles, starting from the concrete question and then defining the logic according to which this very question can be answered.
Once you understand how to properly think through these types of issues, you become completely independent of the typical frameworks that you can find in the canonical case literature, while at the same time being a million times more rigorous and bullet proof.
For example, it doesn't make any sense to have different frameworks for "M&A cases", "Market Entry Cases", "Product Launch Cases", "Capacity Expansion cases", etc.. All these situations share the same core issue and the LOGIC according to which they need to be solved is 100% identical! Without understanding this, a person will never ever be able to rigorously approach cases and always remain a "framework monkey" who has to rely on luck and gets confused as soon as some unforeseen notions appear in the case which don't fit the framework.
This is the big tragedy with the available case literature (which I have seen) - it teaches a fundamentally flawed way of thinking (or lack thereof).
Cheers, Sidi
Hi!
If you want to become really strong in thinking through cases, forget about all these types listed in the books (market entry, product launch, m&a etc.) These categories are completely useless. At the core, there is only three types of cases (at least at the big MBB companies):
- Strategic decisions
- Diagnostics
- Brainstorming questions
Essentialy any business situation belongs into one of these types. Each type can be adressed with a set of fundamental first principles, starting from the concrete question and then defining the logic according to which this very question can be answered.
Once you understand how to properly think through these types of issues, you become completely independent of the typical frameworks that you can find in the canonical case literature, while at the same time being a million times more rigorous and bullet proof.
For example, it doesn't make any sense to have different frameworks for "M&A cases", "Market Entry Cases", "Product Launch Cases", "Capacity Expansion cases", etc.. All these situations share the same core issue and the LOGIC according to which they need to be solved is 100% identical! Without understanding this, a person will never ever be able to rigorously approach cases and always remain a "framework monkey" who has to rely on luck and gets confused as soon as some unforeseen notions appear in the case which don't fit the framework.
This is the big tragedy with the available case literature (which I have seen) - it teaches a fundamentally flawed way of thinking (or lack thereof).
Cheers, Sidi