Case studies are widely used to illuminate key aspects of many different business processes, strategies and operations, but there has always been something inherently unsatisfying about them. It is difficult to put a finger on what is dissatisfying about case studies but, in reading the book ‘What Customers Want’ by Anthony Ulwick, the following passages jump out:

• Bosch came up with a unique idea for keeping dust off the cut line
• Rohm and Haas went straight to the end-users to discover what ..

Now, What Customers Want is a pretty good book. It contains useful information and its content density is around 20% which is high. But the book is full of statements like ‘Companies need to …’ or Companies must decide …’. All of a sudden it struck me what the problem is, companies don’t do anything, people do.

Whenever you read that ‘Company X analyzed the customer’s needs and developed a disruptive new product for the market’ you should be left with a very dissatisfying taste. Company X didn’t do anything. It was people working for Company X who did something. An individual picked up the phone and talked to someone. They met with scientists and engineers and had specific dialogs. They attended events where they learned specific things. Specific people made decisions. What exactly is it that these people did? It is the answer to this question that is really interesting.

Standard descriptions like ‘The company did voice of the customer studies and discovered that …’ are too abstract and unfulfilling. What is interesting is the very specific details of who talked to who, what was said, how the discussion was captured, how this information was recorded, synthesized and analyzed and how it resulted in specific decisions. Rarely do case studies go to this level of detail, yet it is this level of detail that determines success or failure.