A Case for Business in Real Time... working with Professor Jim Theroux

For over one hundred years the case method has been a dominant practice in business schools throughout the world. While the case-method has existed for a century, it was not until very recently that an evolution in case-teaching was accomplished. In the fall of 2001, Dr. Jim Theroux, the Flavin Professor of Entrepreneurship at Isenberg, with the help of the school’s Flavin Fellows, executed the world’s first course utilizing the Real-Time Case Method (RTCM).

What is a real-time case? The RTCM involves the creation and teaching of a business scenario that is produced and analyzed instantaneously as company events occur. This occurred through placing a full-time business journalist inside a new, high-growth company to document the day-to-day decision-making of its management. By utilizing the Internet, important company information was delivered to students immediately. Never before had a university attempted such a challenging case-teaching method. The result? RTCM told the story of company building in more depth and realism than ever seen before in a university course.

Not only were the Flavin Fellows involved with the execution and implementation of the course, but they also found themselves thrown into the belly of an ambitious technology start-up gaining an appreciation of the complexity of business decision making and a more interdisciplinary view of problem-solving.

Due to its uniqueness and success, the RTCM was honored with the 2002 Innovative Entrepreneurship Pedagogy of the Year Award by the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE), and the Decision Sciences Institute’s 2002 Instructional Innovation Award.