In some of the most prestigious business schools in the nation, a variation of the time-honored Harvard-Yale rivalry is afoot. A new upstart on the block called “raw case” is challenging the gold standard of business school cases, which are the bedrock of the case-study method—devised, perfected and exported by Harvard Business School (HBS). “Raw cases,” you might have guessed, originate from Yale.

For those who have never had the HBS case-study experience, here’s a snapshot: First, the students are given a fifteen- to twenty- page document that’s a narrative about a real leader in a real business who needs to confront a real problem or decision. For example, Mr. So-and-So has just been hired by company executives to revamp a lackluster division, but their mandate threatens the organization’s productive and venerated culture. The students are asked, “What should he do?” This narrative is followed by printed exhibits; photographs, memos, graphs, etc. (We call this “evidence.”) Approximately the size and shape of a comic book (sans color and humor), the case is written to be deliberately ambiguous, and generally full of what we call “noise,” information that obscures or leads to dead ends, just like life.

Enter “raw cases,” courtesy of Yale’s School of Management (SOM), which draws its distinction by referring to its competi­tion, HBS cases, as “cooked cases.” Eschewing Harvard’s tightly controlled format, raw cases take advantage of the limitless and—compared to the HBS evidence—infinitely noisier Internet. Case text and materials, which can include everything from full government reports to videos of key players in action, are presented intact. This vastly increases the depth and breadth of the evidence as well as its decoys. Of course, the choice of data still reflects the invisible hand of an “expert” fashioning a learning experience. Nonetheless, the SOM idea is to better simulate the “real” world, where one needs to plot a course through a thicket of stimuli.

So, we in the B-School communities have begun debating which approach is better, cooked or raw? Format aside, the goal is the same for all cases: Students must form a persuasive argu­ment and then propose a corrective action plan. In B-School, students are processing countless cases on a daily basis, synthe­sizing a cacophony of information into precise, coherent posi­tions. Whether cooked or raw, the school’s goal is to present the most germane and effective learning experience for students. If the most important skill to teach is the ability to separate wheat from the chaff of all the “stuff” presented, how does the educator choose how much chaff to provide before it defeats its purpose?

Using various media to hone critical skills makes sense, but I wonder if offering a veritable tsunami of hyperlinked data is fundamentally negligent. We are, after all, supposed to be guiding students, not sending them into the forest with three raisins. The main difference, as I see it, is that the raw approach embraces the boundless, multidimensional body of evidence underlying many business decisions, while the cooked seems to tacitly argue that unlimited information contributes little to learning and understanding.

If we are going to think progressively about business education, it helps to revisit some basic assumptions about learning across all disciplines. First, learning should be an active experience. Paulo Freire, in his famous treatise Pedagogy of the Oppressed, disputed the conventional notion that learners were empty ignorant vessels waiting to be filled. To convert knowledge into under­standing, students must grapple with information until it is endowed with meaning. Second, learning is a continual process that requires ongoing updates of what we knew to what we now know. This becomes more complex as we take in more information. From the stages of childhood onward, learning can be thought of as a progression of perpetual re-understanding.

While both types of case studies—raw or cooked—can meet these learning criteria, we don’t yet have a metric to calculate which is better suited to current challenges. The desired outcome, effective and dynamic leaders, will not be possible if we abandon control of the learning process, but our best effort will lack practical currency if we fail to adapt it to an increasingly complex world. The dimensional shift, away from linear constraints, has already become our students’ modus operandi, and will be the status quo in future careers.

With the future nipping at our heels, it is time for educators to practice applying those same skills that we inculcate in our students, and re-understand how to go about the business of teaching business in an uncontrollable, multifarious world. CA

© 2008 A. Oseas

Editor’s note: The dilemma that Andrea presents is a metaphor for many areas of our lives. —Wendy Richmond