In my personal definition, I usually think profitability cases as a situation of specific factors “trigger” a profit drop and we need to turnaround the situation, while a growth case is a situation which a business has not been performing well for a while and we need to take some initiative to grow the business.

I have encountered a few times “growth” type of case hidden with in a profitability case. As the way I solve these two type of cases are different, I easily get confused by these type of cases, especially when there is more than one client objective. 

For instance, in Kellogg 2020 Case Book, Mustard Clinic's prompt: “In the last few years, the hospital’s profitability has fallen, and they are facing bankruptcy. The CEO asks you: “Why has profitability gone down and how can we turn it around?” The whole case then focus solely on how to grow the profit, and does not touch on ”why has profit gone down", and no information about historical profit change and related historical numbers are given. Since there were 2 key questions (i.e. why did profit go down and how to grow profit), I was quite confused that the whole case omitted the first question. Are there any advice on how to solve these type of cases? Thanks for your advice!