Making the case for the case study

Here is an extremely abbreviated history of the case study:

Prehistoric peoples in the Fertile Crescent told interesting stories about the achievements of their ancestors. Then, sometime during the Bronze Age, they started passing down these elaborate tales in written form for the purposes of educating and inspiring their descendants.

Ok, so you probably won’t find the above in any legitimate historical tome. But case studies, at least in their more familiar guise as “success stories,” are as old as human history itself.

The term “case study” means something different to the scientific and business communities. In broad language—and as it applies to both fields—the case study is an in-depth investigation of or research report on one individual, group, event, or community, real or imagined.

The business case study apparently originated at Harvard Business School nearly 85 years ago. Necessity being the mother (or at least the midwife) of invention, its birth resulted from a dearth: more specifically, from a lack of appropriate textbooks for the school’s graduate program.

The Harvard Business School is now noted for its case studies-based interactive learning program, which helps students understand real-world lessons in management. The faculty works with business leaders at companies worldwide, interviewing them and then writing in-depth accounts of exactly what they did to achieve their success.

As you already know, case studies can be found everywhere (beyond the Fertile Crescent even), crossing business, industry, and educational thresholds. Though companies may have their own unique criteria for what constitutes a “success,” case studies generally include the following information about the customer or client:

Appropriate background information/overview
Discussion of its business and/or technology challenge
Why it chose a particular solution
A description of said solution
Benefits of the solution, both quantitative and qualitative

One area where case studies often differ from one company to the next is how much detail, if any, the organization provides about the roadblocks it faced along the way. Some feel more comfortable telling the story in the broadest strokes possible, while others don’t hesitate to point out actual setbacks or issues faced. The latter usually place a high value on transparency and/or imparting the lessons learned from the experience.

That’s not to say that this last bunch is necessarily more “benevolent” than the former; it’s just more likely that they understand the advantages, financial and otherwise, of a good story, even one that may show the obvious flaws of a particular strategy.

Most people can relate to mistakes (we’re only human, after all). The important differentiator between success and failure may be in how those mistakes are handled. The advent of social media and instantaneous communications are proving this over and over on nearly a daily basis.

Even if a case study is transparent and forthcoming about failures as well as successes, it still doesn’t tell the entire story. With the notable exception of Harvard Business School, mentioned earlier, most case study templates simply don’t allow for the space necessary to do so.

In his article entitled “The Downside of Business Success Stories,” marketer Daniel Faintuch points out the limitations of success stories in business magazines, for instance:

“For those readers who utilize these articles as a source of information and benchmark… the stories are indeed useful and inspiring. However… too many well-intentioned entrepreneurs tend to focus on the success stories as if they provide a basis for building a successful company, when they actually simply discuss a portion of the reason for success.”

While there are obvious differences between a success story in a periodical and a corporate-sponsored case study, they have at least one thing in common: if they are written well and engagingly presented, they’ll probably get read more. If this sounds pretty obvious—well, to some extent, it is.

But the simple idea that good writing can stand on its own, no matter what form it takes, may not always be a guiding principle. It can get overlooked, for instance, during the internal process of picking and choosing which case studies to include in a company’s portfolio.

While the ultimate goal may be to pique your readers’ interest enough that they want to buy your product, service, or solution, the way down that eventual path starts with a good story—be it entertaining, educational, thought-provoking, or spine-tingling.

Our ancestors would agree.

By Jolene Dobbin