Teaching young students how to do business in years to come is almost as difficult as bringing up kids for the uncertain future. Parents base their lectures on own experiences in the past, which was different from the present and expect children to be happy and successful in the unknown reality of the coming decades. In this process they often stick to the values and ideas which were appreciated only in theory, but never proved to get you anywhere in reality. An example is the ideal of modesty and thrift in Slovene traditional culture, unsuitable for present business and consumer climate.
From Foreword to Case Method Guide, EU Leonardo da Vinci Program, 2005-2007.

Clever parents realize nice words are not very persuasive and they turn to examples and tell stories to attract children’s attention.Storytelling is very old way to carry on common knowledge and value systems. Centuries ago there were special people to tell stories, nowadays journalists play this role. Today’s generation learns about life through media, which become reality themselves. We cannot be sure reality shows prepare young people any better for real life than parents’ talks but it seems they are more attracted to them. Movies and reality shows are the fairy tales of our times.

In their essence, cases are stories, resembling reality as much as possible or as much as actual heroes were willing to share with us. Studying good business cases is as close as one can get to the reality before actually taking part in it. Professors at top American business school knew that a long time ago, developing many cases of large and successful companies. Using these cases can be useful to learn about the reality of big and global business, but can hardly lighten up how small European companies manage to take their slice of the market.

This case guide, together with the 12 cases developed in Leonardo project, is a small but brave step toward creating series of stories about European small and medium size companies.

Copy (6,5Mb!) of  Case Method Guide , EU Leonardo da Vinci Programme, 2007 

Janez Damjan: Case study of Medex company (2006)