Now Take the Harvard Case Method to the Internet.

It used to be that someone wanting to learn the Harvard Business School case method had to go to Boston for two years, pay over $100,000 in tuition and room and board, and learn three cases a day for two years.

While it’s not possible to duplicate the Harvard experience exactly, a high school or college student can learn the Harvard Business School ‘case method’ by going online on a new, interactive business simulation site called the Informatist, available at www.informatist.net. This business website combines the tools of massive online gaming with the Harvard case method to teach business thinking to students in an involving, enjoyable way.

What is the Case Method and Why Do I Want to Use It?

The ‘case’ method is simply a way to present business problems in their environment, giving students a way to understand the environment around a business problem and put the student in the place of the business manager making decisions. It is involving as the student needs not only to understand the key aspects of the business, but come up with a solution ‘on the fly,’ which requires developing an instinct about how to analyze and solve a business problem within a very short period of time.

The Harvard Business School ‘case method’ was developed as a way to expose students to a wide array of businesses and business problems in a way that compresses 30 years of business experience into two years of a business school environment. Although students in business school learn a good deal about the tools and legal aspects of business-accounting, microeconomics and business law—the case method allows the students to incorporate the technical aspects of business in novel ways to bring solutions to business problems that they may not have encountered in the past.

This ‘case method’ has been extended to work with problems far outside the business world. Doctors use ‘patient cases’ as a way to understand a patient problem in a succinct way and develop solutions to those medical problems. Just like the business ‘case method,’ the medical example requires students to understand a patient’s issues quickly and develop an instinct about how to solve problems.

How Does the Internet Deliver the Case Method to Solve Business Problems?

In the past, board games were only able to involve three or four players in a fairly static environment. The coming of the minicomputer in the 1970’s allowed business schools to develop the first primitive business games, which were based on large central computers with little flexibility. These interactive games were nevertheless a great step forward when compared to earlier Board games.

The advent of modern online massive gaming has given www.informatist.net a way to simulate real-world business problems in a much more realistic way. By signing on and starting quickly, the high school or college student is able to start analyzing and solving business problems in a novel and enjoyable way.