(Form left) Tamma Koti Reddy, Vice Chancellor (i/c), ICFAI Foundation for Higher Education; Venu Gopal Rao, Director, IBS, Hyderabad; Vicky Lester, CEO, The Case Centre, UK; Virginia Bodolica, Professor, American University of Sharjah; AV Vedpuriswar, former Head, CRC; V Pattabhi Ram, author and teacher; Sudhakar Rao, Director, Branding , ICFAI Group; Sanjib Dutta, Vice President, CRC
In the past 15 years, over 7,000 cases written; adopted by over 900 B-schools across 80-plus countries; 180-plus national and international awards bagged for case writing, ranked third globally in the UK-based global case repository, The Case Centre catalogue, while eight of the world’s top 50 case writers are from its fold: the Hyderabad-based ICFAI Business School’s (IBS) Case Research Centre last week celebrated 25 years of case writing success.
The event saw the participation of several academicians, overseas faculty as well as that of Vicky Lester, CEO, The Case Centre.
Ever since the early 1920s, when Harvard Business School pioneered the case-writing method — where business education is taught through real-life situations rather than traditional lectures, B-schools around the world have used the case system to teach and also added to case literature.
Developing case studies
ICFAI group was founded by NJ Yasaswy, who founded the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts of India and later established 11 universities and several B-schools, tech and law schools. Also a former teacher of finance at IIM-A, Yasaswy had set up the Case Research Centre at ICFAI in 1996 to develop case studies set in India.
Says Sudhakar Rao, Director, Branding, ICFAI, in an interaction, “The IBS CRC has evolved over the last 25 years in a manner that consolidated the vision of our founder in developing cases for India. Today, we have cases that are extremely relevant to the Indian context, as well as those that are global at the same time. Apart from business, it also explores issues such as sustainability and social sectors. The acceptability of cases written by IBS in over 900 business schools across the world is a validation for the process which we started 25 years ago. It has become a good calling card for us.”
Sanjib Dutta, Vice-President, IBS CRC, points out that some of its bestselling cases are on global brands and written from secondary sources. Digital Transformation at Starbucks, which talks about the cafe chain’s digital initiatives across the globe, has been a bestselling case for IBS.
A case written 15 years ago about British Petroleum and how it battled an oil spill is still selling remarkably well. “B-schools still use that case to understand what business ethics are. So, cases like these are classics.”
Inflection point
Dutta says a key inflection point for IBS CRS was a decision taken in the early 2000s to start distributing its cases through The Case Centre in the UK and make its cases a commercial venture instead of just an academic pursuit. That helped make the CRC a key revenue earner as well.
IBS CRC is also looking to develop cases on indigenous knowledge systems.
“For example, we take anecdotes from the Mahabharata. There are a lot of issues with ethical dilemmas, and we have tried to relate them to current business situations and how ethics play out in business. There’s a lot of information out there in the Mahabharata which can be used,” says Dutta.
What is the future agenda of the CRC to continue to stay relevant?
Sudhakar Rao explains: “We need to stay with students in their pursuit of making sense in business situations. We need to customise some of our tools and techniques in approaching the case. For example, making it a digital or multimedia case, or a comic story kind of a case or an AI-based one using emerging technologies. But, ultimately, the takeaways or some of the decisions and discernments that students are supposed to make by looking at a case will remain the same; only the methodology of describing a case change, but the takeaway is going to be constant.
“What a manager is supposed to be equipped with in terms of decision making, critical thinking, compassion, and in terms of handling multiple compelling priorities at the same time and finally choosing to place your bets on one and then giving reasons why you have chosen that one particular path, these are all leadership decisions. Those will remain common even in the years to come.”
Published on November 24, 2025