Using Design Thinking to Write and Publish Novel Teaching Cases: Tips From Experienced Case Authors

Abstract

With increasing calls for a greater connection between management education and practice, teaching cases play a vital role in the business curriculum. Cases not only allow instructors to expose students to practical problems but also let educators contribute to the scholarship of teaching and learning. An important reason why faculty members may refrain from writing cases is they perceive it is difficult to develop publishable cases that are also novel. Reviewers of the journals that publish teaching cases are increasingly asking authors to place the case in the extant literature and explain what makes their case unique. To overcome some of the challenges encountered when attempting to write and publish novel teaching cases, this article presents a useful framework—Design Thinking—for tackling the “wicked problem” of developing novel cases and provides experience-based tips to implement the framework. By introducing the concepts and language of design thinking, we provide case writers with an iterative approach that leads to the development of novel cases by identifying and innovatively addressing instructors’, students’, and editors’ demands. We argue that by applying a design-thinking approach, case writers can produce novel and publishable instructional cases.