Two IE Professors win the 2018 EFMD Case Writing Competition

For the third year in a row, IE Professors won the 2018 EFMD Case Writing Competition, both from the Information Systems and Technology area, Guillermo de Haro and Guillermo de Velasco were recognised for their multimedia case “An App You Can’t Refuse.”

The award marks IE Business School’s eighth Case Writing Award from the European Foundation for Management Development and the third consecutive year IE professors walked away with the prestigious kudos.

Haro and Velasco’s multimedia case describes the situation of BigBangBox, a startup that creates edutainment apps. The case shows the strategy followed in the launch of previous products and it offers the necessary information about the markets of apps, leading to understanding the importance of selecting the right strategy, with the business model and the promotion as keys to success.

“As there are not many cases based on apps, we got inspired by the several projects created by BigBangBox to compare four successful apps, based on the same technology, with similar cost structure, but with totally different business models,” Velasco said. “This way students can learn a lot quickly, but also may be easily confused on how to determine the best outcome.”

The European Foundation for Management Development offers annual awards for outstanding cases that analyse critical managerial areas in 17 different categories, aiming at contributing to the management development challenges.

Haro and Velasco’s case study benefitted from the participation of the app’s founders who tell students the story of the BigBangBox and proposed the dilemma for the launch of  the new app Mafia Business School, the Application. The case will be presented as a graphic story in a comic-like style, with a modern and functional design that will include resources from the BigBangBox to make the case more interesting.

“Even those with experience in business models enjoy talking about games and apps.”

“We have worked with this case in several master programs with hundreds of students. The impact for the students has always been like an inflexion point,” Haro said. “Even those with experience in business models enjoy talking about games and apps, while working hard to try to make the best proposal under unexpected uncertainty. It is all about games, but business games!”

The case is geared toward MBA and MIM students, but can also work for courses in Information Systems, Technological Systems, Innovation and Marketing, showcasing specific cases related to the world of applications, games and mobile devices.

“We both feel very happy and honored to obtain the acknowledgement from EFMD in this category. Authoring the case study ‘An App You Can’t Refuse’ has been an incredible venture,” the authors said in a statement. “For this case, we leveraged on our experience developing digital business models to discuss how to select the most appropriate one to launch a new business based on an app.”

This award marks the eight time IE University gets recognised by the EFMD in different categories, making this the third year in a row.