That rainy evening

Don't go by the title of the page. You are not going to get any scoop on my love life here. The title was just a ploy to get you read this entry. I intend to demystify the world famous tool called 'case' that is used in case-study method of learning. This method has been successfully used by various prestigious institutes (WIMWI included).

What is a case?

Case is a (supposedly) real business situation that the organization in concern went through in their past.

Cases are written by case-writers. In reality, these case-writer must have raked mullah giving gyan to the organization to resolve the issues (that will be defined by the case-writer himself). The business sense of these consultants does not let them stop there. They go on to write 'cases', get them published from a reputed college (like WIMWI) and then earn royalty money from the coming generations of future managers.

90% of these 'cases' are set up in a rainy evening. A case narration almost always start with the protagonist looking outside his window on with raindrops dancing on the window pans. These rains are not meant to be enjoyed as apparent from conduct of the protagonist and the case-. After talking in brief about tensions in his life (we are talking about professional issues ofcourse; personal issues are almost never written about unless the case-writer is employed by Tehlaka.com), the protagonist takes the case-writer through a flashback. They talk about history, society, economics, business, biology and what not. For sack of completion, you can include the list of all the subjects that you went through in your high-school and beyond.

If they feel that some third party (e.g. reader of the case) might not have gone through same system of schooling, the case-writer uses a novel method called Exhibits. Most of the readers might think that these exhibits are basically irrelevant bunch of facts and figures. However, the reality is that the exhibits are output of the conversations between case-writer and protagonist when the discussions went off-track (due to effect of alcohol or otherwise).

A typical case consists of around 10-15 page of narration and 8-10 exhibits. There is no relation between the numbers of page and gravity of situation under discussion. You might wonder may be the case-writer takes commission from paper manufacturers too (after all thousands of copies of such cases are printed/xeroxed worldwide).

These cases are sold at a price of around 5-10$ per copy. Reputed institutes like WIMWI purchase a copy for each of its student (there is rumor that rising costs of these cases had a huge contribution in the recent hike of fee from this institute). Alas their is no provision of personalization and customization even after paying such a hefty price. If you stay in Ahmedabad, you might find them in raddi-ke-bhav from the raddiwala outside the WIMWI campus. You just need to ask him for CaseMate on the subject of your interest.

With this, I conclude this article. I hope it was an insightful reading for you. Do comment if you liked this entry. I plan to write next about 'case-study' method itself. Your valuable comments will encourage me to refrain myself from using cheap tactics of attracting readers.