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What Is a Case Study?
When you’re performing research as part of your job or for a school assignment, you’ll probably come across case studies that help you to learn more about the topic at hand. But what is a case study and why are they helpful? Read on to learn all about case studies.
Deep Dive into a Topic
At face value, a case study is a deep dive into a topic. Case studies can be found in many fields, particularly across the social sciences and medicine. When you conduct a case study, you create a body of research based on an inquiry and related data from analysis of a group, individual or controlled research environment.
As a researcher, you can benefit from the analysis of case studies similar to inquiries you’re currently studying. Researchers often rely on case studies to answer questions that basic information and standard diagnostics cannot address.
Study a Pattern
One of the main objectives of a case study is to find a pattern that answers whatever the initial inquiry seeks to find. This might be a question about why college students are prone to certain eating habits or what mental health problems afflict house fire survivors. The researcher then collects data, either through observation or data research, and starts connecting the dots to find underlying behaviors or impacts of the sample group’s behavior.
Gather Evidence
During the study period, the researcher gathers evidence to back the observed patterns and future claims that’ll be derived from the data. Since case studies are usually presented in the professional environment, it’s not enough to simply have a theory and observational notes to back up a claim. Instead, the researcher must provide evidence to support the body of study and the resulting conclusions.
Present Findings
As the study progresses, the researcher develops a solid case to present to peers or a governing body. Case study presentation is important because it legitimizes the body of research and opens the findings to a broader analysis that may end up drawing a conclusion that’s more true to the data than what one or two researchers might establish. The presentation might be formal or casual, depending on the case study itself.
Draw Conclusions
Once the body of research is established, it’s time to draw conclusions from the case study. As with all social sciences studies, conclusions from one researcher shouldn’t necessarily be taken as gospel, but they’re helpful for advancing the body of knowledge in a given field. For that purpose, they’re an invaluable way of gathering new material and presenting ideas that others in the field can learn from and expand upon.
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Transformation of IBM
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Product Description
Publication Date: November 06, 1990
Source: Harvard Business School
John Akers, IBM's chairman, must confront how to transform a $60 billion, full line, global computer company that is the leader in every market it serves, yet losing share across the board. The case explores senior management's perspective on the process of organization change.

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The Transformation of IBM
- Format: Print
- | Language: English
- | Pages: 22
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Home >> Marketing HBS Case Solutions >> IBM

SUCCESS & FAILURE OF IBM
- Thomas J. Watson’s culture, structure, system and work ethics led to success.
- Thomas J. Watson Jr focused on innovation and customers’ desires in order to make their life easy.
- IBM PC was the most successful innovation technology of its time.
- Status of Cultural Icon was achieved through Stanly Kubrick’s movie.
- Sales of non-current assets cover up inefficiencies of the company.
- IBM adopted wrong marketing strategies whereas other vendor did a better job of PC in terms of marketing than IBM.
- Products were developed for the wrong market and mainframe was based on a mid-range market.
TURN AROUND OF THE COMPANY
IBM was battling to stay in the business sector where the representatives and clients were prepared to abandon them. The organization had high cost base and was not creating enough income, and the PC division sparkling star of IBM had become dead weight. To counter this, new CFO was enlisted to cut huge cost promptly by cutting 75000 representatives and outsourcing the assembling of PC's by closing down rest of the divisions aside from the ThinkPad brand.
In this phase it is seen that Gerstner has given greater focus to strategically planning, integrating business groups and forming committee to oversee all problems and recommend solutions e.g. CEC focuses on corporate strategy and turn around and WMC focused on global tactical strategy along with operations. Formation of global sales team and implementation of CRM have focus on each customer account and a specialist in each team deal with technical problems as well.
THE NEXT BIG THING
In the shift to find high growth and the next big thing, IBM needed to maintain the low cost structure and for that the company it partnered with SAP, PeopleSoft and Siebel so that IBM would be using the same software’s internally as that of their customers. With this implementation, the turnaround was complete regarding the cost reduction. The growing Internet .........................
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When you’re performing research as part of your job or for a school assignment, you’ll probably come across case studies that help you to learn more about the topic at hand. But what is a case study and why are they helpful? Read on to lear...
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John Akers, IBM's chairman, must confront how to transform a $60 billion, full line, global computer company that is the leader in every market it serves
IBM was battling to stay in the business sector where the representatives and clients were prepared to abandon them. The organization had high cost base and was