Press release

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1 March 2021  #CaseAwards2021

Announcing The Case Centre’s 31st Awards and Competitions Winners

Red carpet with golden pillars

A new generation of talent emerges, and helping educators to teach online in the pandemic and beyond.

The 11 Awards and six Competitions are an annual celebration of excellence in case writing and teaching at schools of business, management and government worldwide. Now in their 31st year, the Awards have been global since 2011 (European Case Awards until 2010).

The 2021 results are characterised by a record 30 individuals winning their first Award or Competition, consolidating a three-year, rising, trend: 2020: 22; 2019: 18. All six Competitions went to first-time winning individual educators (Outstanding: Contribution to the Case Method; Case Teacher; Case Writer; Case Writer: Hot Topic; Compact Case; New Case Writer).

Six schools in five countries make their debut winning appearance: EDHEC Business School; IAE Aix-Marseille Graduate School of Management; Lund University School of Economics and Management; Management Development Institute (MDI), Gurgaon; Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, USC Marshall School of Business; York Management School (UK).

Overall Winning Case, The Dollar Shave Club, looks at innovation in the shaving industry. For the second successive year, London Business School (LBS) has an Overall Winning Case author; Nader Tavassoli, the winner in 2021. LBS wins this Award for the fifth time - the second since the Awards went global. The case’s other co-authors are Jamie Anderson (who wins his second Case Award) of Antwerp Management School (second Awards win), and Karin Kollenz-Quétard (first-time winner) of EDHEC Business School (first-time win).

This unprecedented year of pandemic, has seen most schools switch to teaching online, bringing the unique challenge of reimagining case pedagogy outside the live classroom, including the core discussion element. This has necessitated fresh thinking, problem solving and courage on the part of faculty worldwide to rapidly adapt case materials and their teaching. The authors of the Overall Winning Case highlighted the importance of responding to this imperative. According to Karin Kollenz-Quétard, “My co-authors and I discussed a lot how our case teaching changes when online. We have shared our insights, using the winning Dollar Shave Club case as an example. We hope this has helped colleagues worldwide to use our case and teach it successfully online.” The three Overall Winning Case authors will be giving a webinar around these themes on 23 March 2021.

Outstanding Contribution to the Case Method was won by Paul Beamish of Ivey Business School. Paul becomes a new laureate of The Case Centre’s Awards, and his win represents the second time (previously 2012) Ivey Business School faculty have won this Award in its 11-year global history, highlighting the School’s strong commitment to the case method.

Ivey Business School is also producing new case talent. Three first-time authors: Matthew Sooy, Lauren Iuliani and W Spencer Ashby won this year’s Outstanding Compact Case competition with their case Nora Lang: Pay Equity at FTS. Ivey Business School has now won six times in the global Awards and Competitions.
 
Outstanding Case Writer was won by first-time winners, Patricia Lui and Lipika Bhattacharya of Singapore Management University, which celebrates its third success in The Case Centre Awards and Competitions, with their case: Kobe Influencer Marketing: Building Brand Awareness via Social Media.

Outstanding Case Writer: Hot Topic went both to a new winner, Jeremy Dann, and a first-time winning school: Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, USC Marshall School of Business, with Barnana: Adventures in Upcycling the winning case for this year’s designated ‘hot topic’: UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Outstanding New Case Writer represents the first Awards’ success both for its two authors and their schools. The Roy René Confectionery Is 100 years: Celebrating Brand Heritage to Sustain a New Strategy was co-authored by Fabien Pecot of York Management School and Virginie de Barnier of IAE Aix-Marseille Graduate School of Management.

Outstanding Case Teacher was won by Mats Urde and gives Lund University School of Economics and Management its first Case Centre Awards and Competitions’ success.

Further winning schools in 2021 (please find full details after the press release text):

Two category wins: Harvard Business School - six of seven authors first-time winners; INSEAD - four of five authors first-time winners; Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University - one of five authors a first-time winner.

One category win: ICFAI Business School (IBS) - co-author Debapratim Purkayastha wins a record fifth Knowledge, Information and Communications Systems Management category and is just two Awards and Competitions successes behind the record 13 held by Sumantra Ghoshal; Management Development Institute (MDI), Gurgaon - both authors first-time winners; MIT Sloan School of Management - both authors first-time winners; UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School - both authors first-time winners; University of Virginia Darden School of Business - both authors first-time winners.

Richard McCracken, Director of The Case Centre said:

The 2021 Awards and Competitions reveal a new generation of case method talent emerging across the globe with an astonishing, record breaking, 30 new laureates. Particularly noteworthy is that all six Competitions were exclusively taken by a total of ten, first-time winning individuals. Established authors at schools long associated with the case method still took several Case Award categories, but the 31st Awards’ and Competitions’ winners also included six new schools, from five countries.

“Educators have faced challenges during the pandemic, especially to take teaching - including case classes - online. This has highlighted the need for cases to adapt. The authors of the Overall Winning Case are integrating this flexibility, including guidance for educators worldwide, in their comprehensive teaching note, and offering direct dialogue and a webinar. We anticipate that teaching with cases online will become an enduring norm as part of blended programmes. So, building on our learning from this year’s Awards, we will be encouraging published authors in The Case Centre catalogue to update teaching notes to reflect the new online teaching reality.

“The Awards provide an annual snapshot of the topics being used to teach business and management around the world. This year saw a resurgence of interest in multinational companies, in particular those with an online or technology focus. For the first time, we also saw a case relating to the social media phenomenon of ‘influencers’ (Kobe). Broadly ethical issues also keep their place including energy sustainability (Enel), food upcycling (Barnana) and gender pay equality (FTS). 27% of winning cases featured female protagonists.”

View the results in full

For more information please contact:

Antoinette Mills, 44 (0)7974 397288, antoinette@thecasecentre.org

Notes for Editors

  1. Meet the winners
    1. Outstanding Contribution to the Case Method
    2. Outstanding Case Teacher
  2. Judging criteria & judges
  3. About The Case Centre

1. Meet the winners

1.1 Outstanding Contribution to the Case Method - Paul Beamish

Paul BeamishPaul Beamish is Professor of International Business at Ivey Business School. He is a Director of the International Business Institute, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and past Dean of the Fellows of the Academy of International Business.

Paul is a committed and recognised case teacher and a widely published case author.

Paul has dedicated his career to advancing the case method around the world through a variety of initiatives in Africa, India and Southeast Asia. He has also worked to improve access to quality case materials in developing countries.

Find out more

1.2 Outstanding Case Teacher - Mats Urde

Mats UrdeMats Urde is an Associate Professor of Strategic Brand Management at Lund University School of Economics and Management (LUSEM).

Mats is a strong proponent of the case method and has promoted a case teaching and case learning culture at his university. He is co-founder of Lund University Case Academy and LUSEM Case Academy and heads its case training programme. He also coaches the Lund student teams for international case competitions.

Several of Mats’ courses, such as Strategic Brand Management and Corporate Brand Management and Reputation, are wholly case based, with Mats embracing the full potential of the case method and its impact on research, teaching and learning.

Mats was voted the Lund Teacher of the Year (2013) and received The Lund University Pedagogical Teaching Award (2015).

Find out more

2. Award descriptions, judging criteria & judges

The Case Centre Awards and Competitions recognise outstanding case writers and teachers from across the globe. These prestigious accolades celebrate worldwide excellence in case writing and teaching and are now considered the case method community's annual 'Oscars'.

Awards for cases are presented for ten management categories plus an Overall Winner Award and a ‘free’ case. Each year, an award is also made to recognise an individual who has made an Outstanding Contribution to the Case Method.

The Outstanding Case Teacher competition recognises an excellent practitioner in the case classroom.

Three case writing competitions are held each year to find an outstanding case writer, an outstanding first-time case writer and to identify the best new case written on a topical ‘Hot topic’, this year, Diversity and Discrimination.

The Awards are in their 31st year. They have been awarded on a global basis since 2011 (previously European Awards).

Management categories, including the ‘free case’ and Overall Winner Award, are presented to those cases that have been used in the largest number of organisations across the globe in the past year. Cases that have been added to The Case Centre’s collection in the past five years are eligible. The Overall Award goes to the most popular case across all categories.

Case Awards are assessed anonymously, based on data.

Each Case Competition is decided by a panel of judges:

  • Outstanding Contribution to the Case Method: The Case Centre’s Board of Trustees selects the recipient of this award.
  • Case Competitions: Expert panels judge the case competition entries anonymously to ensure complete impartiality.
  • 2021 Outstanding Case Teacher judges: David Wood, Ivey Business School; Jill Avery, Harvard Business School; Richard McCracken, The Case Centre; and Urs Mueller, SDA Bocconi School of Management.
  • 2021 Outstanding Case Writer judges: Caren Scheepers, Gordon Institute of Business Science; Naman Desai, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad; Richard McCracken, The Case Centre; and Tao Yue, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University.
  • 2021 Outstanding Case Writer ‘Hot Topic’ judges: Katell Le Goulven, The Hoffmann Global Institute for Business and Society at INSEAD; Lavinia-Cristina Losif-Lazar, Copenhagen Business School; Meredith Storey, SDG Academy; and Richard McCracken, The Case Centre.
  • 2021 Outstanding Compact Case judges: Ashraf Sheta, American University in Cairo; Joanne Lawrence, Hult International Business School; Richard McCracken, The Case Centre; and Sanjib Dutta, ICMR India.
  • 2021 New Case Writer judges: Eugenio Gomez Alatorre, IPADE Business School; Jeroen van den Berg, University of Hong Kong; Marika Taishoff, International University of Monaco; and Richard McCracken, The Case Centre.

3. The Case Centre

The Case Centre is the independent home of the case method. We are dedicated to advancing the case method worldwide, sharing knowledge, wisdom and experience to inspire and transform business education across the globe. We are a not-for-profit organisation and registered charity.

We:

We are a membership organisation and our growing case method community of over 500 academic and corporate member organisations worldwide is at the heart of everything we do.

www.thecasecentre.org

Governance

We are governed by our Memorandum and Articles of Association. Our Executive Committee, comprising up to 14 annually elected academic representatives from member organisations, meets four times a year to establish our policy and oversee our progress. Our US operation is overseen by a board of directors from academia and business.

Get in touch

If you have any media enquiries please get in touch with our Media Team.

Antoinette Mills
Director of Communications
t
+44 (0)1234 756416
Paddy Day
Paddy Day
Media and Content Developer
t
44 (0)1234 756428

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