For more than a century, M.B.A. students have learned business strategy through the case method. Professors assign write-ups of real-life corporate challenges. Students pore over pages of charts and reports on executives’ perspectives, then debate in class the best plan of attack.
At Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, AI is turning that method on its head. Students no longer read through every available factoid on, say, Walmart’s wages for hourly workers and write a memo—tasks that can be easily circumvented with generative AI tools. Instead, M.B.A.s must draw out details and data through open-ended conversations with AI chatbots and then craft a strategy.
Students who’ve worked through the AI-guided case—this one involves helping a school district erase a $50 million deficit fueled by transportation costs—say it more closely resembles what consultants and business leaders do in the real world: You’re not handed information. You must determine what you need to know from a cast of AI-created school officials and employees, and grill it out of them.
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