Practise judgement, not hindsight
Decide
Every case study is written by someone who knows the ending. These are not. Each is a real decision with the names removed and only the information available at the time. You choose, say how sure you are and imagine how you might fail. Then the case reveals who it was, what they chose, what happened, and how good their reasoning was, judged apart from their luck.
- The Company That Invented Its Market Do you fight to stay in the business that defines your company, or leave it?
- The Giant's Small Computer How do you build a personal computer quickly enough to matter, without giving away the future?
- The Rental Giant and the Mail-Order Upstart They propose that you buy their company for $50 million, and that they run your online business. Do you accept?
- The Retailer's Servers Should a retailer become a supplier of computing infrastructure to anyone who wants it?
- The Search Company and the Phone Software Should a web company buy a tiny start-up and enter the phone software business?
- The Phone Giant's Platform Which software platform should carry your smartphones into the future?
- Two Businesses Under One Roof How should you separate the declining business from the growing one, and how fast?
- The Network and the Photo App The photo app's founders are raising money at a valuation of about half a billion dollars. Do you buy them, build your own, or let them be?
- The Software in the Box Do you stop releasing new versions of the software people can buy and own, and sell it only by subscription?
- The Game Chip and the Scientists Do you build general-purpose computing into every graphics chip you sell, including the cheap ones for gamers, and give away the software to program it?
- The Network That Lived on Desktops Do you reorganise the whole company around the phone, rebuilding your apps and putting ads into the mobile news feed itself, while your existing business is still on the desktop?