Twenty upcoming case studies are set to join the resources for students globally, beginning with those in Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business. 

The University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business and University of Western Ontario’s Ivey Publishing announced a three-year partnership to create a regional hub for 20 Western Canada case studies. 

Ten case studies are currently being conducted. All case studies will follow companies that have completed the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) Rockies program at the University of Calgary.  

For each study, a faculty member from the Haskayne School of Business (HSB) will partner with a faculty member from the Ivey School of Business to analyze a situation that a company faced and the decisions that followed.  

Studied cases may include purchasing decisions, human resource decisions or investor meetings. 

“This case study project is a way for us to bridge what happens in real organizations, for students to be able to experience that in the classroom,” said Dr. Gina Grandy, Dean of the HSB. 

Once completed, studies will be used across relevant classrooms and programs in the HSB. 

“Publishing through Ivey Publishing means that the case studies that are written about the experiences of primarily Alberta-based early-startup companies in the stages of commercialization from our program will show up in classrooms across the globe for students to learn about their experiences,” said Grandy. 

“These case studies could show up in any of our classes. If the decision is a finance decision, students doing our Bachelor of Commerce will get this in one of their finance classes. If the decision focus is something around a human resources issue, it might show up in one of our human resources classes.” 

The HSB is one of five business schools in the country to have a CDL program. The program began at the Rotman School of Management and opened its CDL-Rockies branch at HSB in 2017. 

CDL-Rockies brings together many of the region’s entrepreneurs, investors and scientists from fields including energy evolution and health care, according to the program’s website. The program has two specialized streams, energy and agrifood.  

Case studies to benefit budding local entrepreneurs.  

The website credits Calgary with having the most patents filed per capita in Canada. 

“There have been more than 380 ventures that have participated in the (HSB CDL) program, with 127 of them successfully completing,” Grandy said. 

“We are eight years into the program, it’s a great time to be looking back and to start featuring some of those companies and the challenges they face.” 

The CDL is designed to support and accelerate the commercialization of science and tech-based startups, according to Grandy. 

“Our focus with this particular partnership will be on companies that have gone through that program in tech and or agriculture-related fields and sectors,” she said. 

“Students can learn more about the situations, the challenges they face, and then in the classroom, they get to propose solutions around how they would recommend to solve the challenge that these amazing companies have faced.” 

Grandy said that students enrolled in the HSB are “overwhelmingly” from Calgary and or Alberta and having access to localized case studies gives students information they can relate to and learn from. 

“It exposes them to critical thinking and decision making and they can also see the impact entrepreneurial firms have on the economy in Alberta,” she said. 

The partnership is already a success according to Grandy, but seeing a student choose a career path based on a case study taught and reviewed in class will be the true measure of triumph. 

“That’s a win,” she said. 

Grandy also highlighted the importance of seeing these case studies used in schools across the country and world. 

“If we actually can see these cases being used across the country and globally, what a tremendous success that would be, because it demonstrates how the teaching excellence, and the unique programming offered through the Haskayne School of Business and CDL Rockies has a regional, national and global impact, and that’s quite remarkable,” she said.