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Strategy Case Studies

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Hertz CEO Kathryn Marinello with CFO Jamere Jackson and other members of the executive team in 2017

Top 40 Most Popular Case Studies of 2021

Two cases about Hertz claimed top spots in 2021's Top 40 Most Popular Case Studies

Two cases on the uses of debt and equity at Hertz claimed top spots in the CRDT’s (Case Research and Development Team) 2021 top 40 review of cases.

Hertz (A) took the top spot. The case details the financial structure of the rental car company through the end of 2019. Hertz (B), which ranked third in CRDT’s list, describes the company’s struggles during the early part of the COVID pandemic and its eventual need to enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The success of the Hertz cases was unprecedented for the top 40 list. Usually, cases take a number of years to gain popularity, but the Hertz cases claimed top spots in their first year of release. Hertz (A) also became the first ‘cooked’ case to top the annual review, as all of the other winners had been web-based ‘raw’ cases.

Besides introducing students to the complicated financing required to maintain an enormous fleet of cars, the Hertz cases also expanded the diversity of case protagonists. Kathyrn Marinello was the CEO of Hertz during this period and the CFO, Jamere Jackson is black.

Sandwiched between the two Hertz cases, Coffee 2016, a perennial best seller, finished second. “Glory, Glory, Man United!” a case about an English football team’s IPO made a surprise move to number four. Cases on search fund boards, the future of malls, Norway’s Sovereign Wealth fund, Prodigy Finance, the Mayo Clinic, and Cadbury rounded out the top ten.

Other year-end data for 2021 showed:

Online “raw” case usage remained steady as compared to 2020 with over 35K users from 170 countries and all 50 U.S. states interacting with 196 cases.
Fifty four percent of raw case users came from outside the U.S..
The Yale School of Management (SOM) case study directory pages received over 160K page views from 177 countries with approximately a third originating in India followed by the U.S. and the Philippines.
Twenty-six of the cases in the list are raw cases.
A third of the cases feature a woman protagonist.
Orders for Yale SOM case studies increased by almost 50% compared to 2020.
The top 40 cases were supervised by 19 different Yale SOM faculty members, several supervising multiple cases.

CRDT compiled the Top 40 list by combining data from its case store, Google Analytics, and other measures of interest and adoption.

All of this year’s Top 40 cases are available for purchase from the Yale Management Media store .

And the Top 40 cases studies of 2021 are:

1. Hertz Global Holdings (A): Uses of Debt and Equity

2. Coffee 2016

3. Hertz Global Holdings (B): Uses of Debt and Equity 2020

4. Glory, Glory Man United!

5. Search Fund Company Boards: How CEOs Can Build Boards to Help Them Thrive

6. The Future of Malls: Was Decline Inevitable?

7. Strategy for Norway's Pension Fund Global

8. Prodigy Finance

9. Design at Mayo

10. Cadbury

11. City Hospital Emergency Room

13. Volkswagen

14. Marina Bay Sands

15. Shake Shack IPO

16. Mastercard

17. Netflix

18. Ant Financial

19. AXA: Creating the New CR Metrics

20. IBM Corporate Service Corps

21. Business Leadership in South Africa's 1994 Reforms

22. Alternative Meat Industry

23. Children's Premier

24. Khalil Tawil and Umi (A)

25. Palm Oil 2016

26. Teach For All: Designing a Global Network

27. What's Next? Search Fund Entrepreneurs Reflect on Life After Exit

28. Searching for a Search Fund Structure: A Student Takes a Tour of Various Options

30. Project Sammaan

31. Commonfund ESG

32. Polaroid

33. Connecticut Green Bank 2018: After the Raid

34. FieldFresh Foods

35. The Alibaba Group

36. 360 State Street: Real Options

37. Herman Miller

38. AgBiome

39. Nathan Cummings Foundation

40. Toyota 2010

The Leading Source of Insights On Business Model Strategy & Tech Business Models

A business strategy is a deliberate plan that helps a business to achieve a long-term vision and mission by drafting a business model to execute that business strategy. A business strategy, in most cases, doesn’t follow a linear path, and execution will help shape it along the way.

Business Strategy Examples In 2024: Examples, Case Studies, And Tools

Table of Contents

What is a business strategy?

At this stage, it is important to clarify a few critical aspects.

As an HBR working paper entitled “From Strategy to Business Models and to Tactics” pointed out:

Put succinctly, business model refers to the logic of the firm, the way it operates and how it creates value for its stakeholders. Strategy refers to the choice of business model through which the firm will compete in the marketplace. Tactics refers to the residual choices open to a firm by virtue of the business model that it employs.

Personally, I have a controversial relationship with the concept of “strategy.” I feel it’s too easy to make it foggy and empty of practical meaning.

Yet strategy and vision matter in business.

A strategy isn’t just a calculated path, but often a philosophical choice about how the world works.

Usually, it takes years and, at times, also decades for a strategy to become viable. And once it does become viable, it seems obvious only in hindsight.

In this guide, we see what that means.

In the real world, the difficult part is understanding the problem

Bounded rationality is a concept attributed to Herbert Simon, an economist and political scientist interested in decision-making and how we make decisions in the real world. In fact, he believed that rather than optimizing (which was the mainstream view in the past decades) humans follow what he called satisficing.

In the real world, a lot of time and resources are spent on defining the problem.

Classic case studies at business school assume in most scenarios that the problem is known and the solution needs to be found.

In the real world, the problem is unknown, the situation is highly ambiguous, and the most difficult part is making the decision that might solve that same problem you’re trying to figure out.

How do you execute a strategy in that context? Business modeling can help!

Is a business strategy the same thing as a business model?

A business strategy is a deliberate vision to get toward a desired long-term goal. A business model is a great tool to execute a business strategy.

Yet while achieving a long-term goal a business strategy set a vision, mission and value proposition that can be executed through several possible business models. When one of the drafted business models encounters the favor of the market that is when a business strategy becomes successful!

As the business world started to change dramatically, again, by the early 2000s, also the concept of strategy changed with it.

In the previous era, the strategy was primarily made of locking in the supply chain to guarantee a strong distribution toward the marketplace.

And yet, the web enabled new companies to form with a bottom-up approach.

In short, product development cycles shortened, and frameworks like lean , agile , and continuous innovation became integrated into a world where software took over.

Where most of the processes before the digital age, were physical in nature. As the web took off, most of the processes became digital.

In short, the software would become the core enhancer of hardware.

We’ve seen how in cases like Apple’s iPhone , it wasn’t just the hardware that made the difference.

But it was the development ecosystem and the applications that enhanced the capabilities of the device.

Thus, from a product standpoint, hardware has been enhanced more and more with the software side.

At the same time, the way companies developed products in the first place changed.

Software and digits-based companies could gather feedback early on, thus enabling the customers’ feedback as a key element of the whole product development cycle.

Therefore, wherein the previous era, companies spent billions of budgets to release markets, and products, with little customer feedback.

In the digital era, customer feedback became built into the product development loop.

That led to frameworks with faster and faster product releases, which also changed the way we do marketing .

As pointed out by Eric Ries, a minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort through a cycle of build, measure, learn; that is the foundation of the lean startup methodology.

In a classic MVP approach, the loop (build, measure, learn) has to be very quick, and it has to lead to the so-called product/market fit .

As the web made the ability to gather customers’ feedback early on, and as the whole process becomes less and less expensive, also lean approaches evolved, to gain feedback from customers as early as possible.

From build > demo > sell, to demo > sell > build , lean approaches got leaner.

And the era of customer-centrism and customer obsession developed:

Customer obsession goes beyond quantitative and qualitative data about customers, and it moves around customers’ feedback to gather valuable insights. Those insights start by the entrepreneur’s wandering process, driven by hunch, gut, intuition, curiosity, and a builder mindset. The product discovery moves around a building, reworking, experimenting, and iterating loop.

This whole change flipped the strategy world upside down.

And from elaborate business plans , we moved to business modeling , as an experimental tool, that enabled entrepreneurs to gather feedback continuously.

In a customer-centered business world, business models have become effective thinking tools, to represent a business and a business strategy on a single page, which helped the whole execution process.

The key building blocks of a classic business model approach, like a business model canvas or lean startup canvas move around the concept of value proposition , that glue them together.

And from the supply chain , we moved to customer value chains .

Where most digital business models learned to gather customers’ feedback in multiple ways.

The business strategy formed in the digital era, therefore, developed its own customer-centered view of the world, and the business theory world followed.

Academics, following practitioners, moved away from traditional models (like Porter’s Five Forces ) to more customer-centered approaches ( business model canvas , lean canvas).

The mindset shift flipped from distribution and optimization on the supply side.

To optimize on the demand side, or how to build products that people want, in the first place. This is the new mantra.

No more grandiose business plans, just substantial testing, iteration, and experimentation.

In this new context, we can understand the strategy developed by several players and how business modeling has become the most important strategy tool.

And the interesting part is, whether you want to scale to become a tech giant, or you just want to build a small, viable business, it all starts from the same place!

The minimum viable audience (MVA) represents the smallest possible audience that can sustain your business as you get it started from a microniche (the smallest subset of a market). The main aspect of the MVA is to zoom into existing markets to find those people which needs are unmet by existing players.

Is business strategy a science?

Business strategy is more of an art than a science.

In short, a business strategy starts with a series of assumptions about how the business world looks in a certain period of time and for a certain target of people.

Whether those assumptions will turn out to be successful will highly depend on several factors.

For instance, back in the late 1990s when the web took over, new startups came up with the idea of revolutionizing many services.

While those ideas seemed to make sense, they turned out to be completely off, and many of those startups failed in what would be recognized as a dot-com bubble.

While in hindsight certain aspects of that bubble came up (like frauds, or schemes).

In general, some of the ideas for which startups got financed seemed to be visionary and turned out to work a decade later (see DoorDash , or Instacart , in relation to Webvan’s bankruptcy).

For instance, some startups tried to bring on-demand streaming to the web (which today we call Netflix ). Those ideas proved to be too early.

They made sense but from the commercial standpoint, they didn’t.

Thus, if we were to use the scientific method, once those assumptions would have proved wrong in the real world, we would have discarded them.

However, those assumptions proved to be wrong, in that time period, given the current circumstances.

While we can use the scientific inquiry process in business strategy, it’s hard to say that it is a scientific discipline.

So what’s the use of business strategy?

In my opinion, business strategy is useful for three main reasons:

Focus : chose one path over another.
Vision : have a long-term strategic goal.
Commercial viability : create a self-sustainable business.

As a practitioner, someone who tries to build successful businesses, I don’t need to be “scientific.”

I need to make sure not to be completely off track. For that matter, I aim at creating businesses.

Thus, I need to understand where to focus my attention in a relatively long period of time (3-5 years at least) and make sure that those ideas I pursue are able to generate profits, which – in my opinion – might be a valid indicator that those ideas are correct for the time being.

If those conditions are met, I’ll call it a “successful business.”

Those ideas will become a business model , that executes a business strategy.

This doesn’t mean those ideas, turned into a business model , pushed into the world will always be successful (profitable).

As the marketplace evolves I will need to adjust, and tweak a business model to fit with the new evolving scenarios, and I’ll need to be able to “bet” on new possible business models .

Survivorship bias

Survivorship bias is a phenomenon where what’s not visible (because extinct) isn’t taken into account when analyzing the past.

In short, we analyze the past based on what’s visible.

This error happens in any field, and in business, we might get fooled by that as well.

In short, when we analyze the past we do that in hindsight.

That makes us cherry-pick the things that survived and assume that those carry the successful characteristics we’re looking for.

For instance, for each Amazon or Google that survived there were hundreds if not thousands of companies that failed, with the same kind of “successful features” as Amazon or Google.

So why do we analyze successful companies in the first place? In my opinion, there are several reasons:

Those successful companies have turned into Super Gatekeepers to billions of people : as I showed in the gatekeeping hypothesis , and in the surfer’s model , a go-to-market strategy for startups will need to be able to leverage existing digital pipelines to reach key customers.

In a world driven by tech giants that locked-in the digital distribution pipelines to reach billions of people across the globe, the gatekeeper hypothesis states that small businesses will need to pass through those nodes to reach key customers. Thus, those gatekeepers become the enablers (or perhaps deterrent) for small businesses across the globe.

Modeling and experimentation : another key point is about modeling what’s working for other businesses and borrowing parts of those models, to see what works for our business. By borrowing parts you can build your own business model, yet that requires a lot of testing.

Where scientists use labs to test their hypotheses through experimentation. Entrepreneurs build business model experiments to test their businesses ideas in the real world.

Skin in the game testing : therefore business models become key tools for experimentation, where we can use real customers’ feedback (not a survey, or opinions but actions) and test our hypotheses and assumptions. When we’re able to sell our products, when people keep getting back to our platform, or service, there is no best way to test our assumptions that measure those actions.

Lindy effect and aging in reverse

The Lindy Effect is a theory about the ageing of non-perishable things, like technology or ideas. Popularized by author Nicholas Nassim Taleb, the Lindy Effect states that non-perishable things like technology age – linearly – in reverse. Therefore, the older an idea or a technology, the same will be its life expectancy.

Nicholas Nassim Taleb , in his book Antifragile , popularized a concept called Lindy Effect .

In very simple terms the Lindy Effect states that in technology (like any other field where the object of discussion is non-perishable) things age in reverse.

Thus, life expectancy, rather than diminishing with age, has a longer life expectancy.

Therefore, a technology that has lived for two thousand years, has a life expectancy of another thousand years.

That is a probabilistic rule of thumb that works on averages.

Thus, if a technology (say the Internet) has stayed with us for twenty years, it doesn’t mean we can expect only to live for another twenty years at least.

But as the Internet has proved successful already, the Lindy Effect might not apply.

In short, as we have additional information about a phenomenon the Lindy Effect might lose relevance.

For instance, if I know a person is twenty, yet sick of a terminal disease, I can’t expect to use normal life expectancy tables.

So I’ll have to apply that information to understand the future.

Strategies take years to fully roll out

It was 2006, when Tesla, with his co-founder Martin Eberhard , launched a sports car that broke down the trade-off between high performance and fuel efficiency.

Tesla, which for a few years had been building up an electric sports car ready to be marketed, finally pulled it off.

As Elon Musk would explain Back in 2012:

In 2006 our plan was to build an electric sports car followed by an affordable electric sedan, and reduce our dependence on oil…delivering Model S is a key part of that plan and represents Tesla’s transition to a mass-production automaker and the most compelling car company of the 21st century.

The beauty of a strategy that turns into a successful company, is that it might take years to roll out and seem obvious only in hindsight.

This connects to what I like to call the transitional business model.

Or the idea, that many companies, before getting into a fully rolled out business strategy, transition through a period of low scalability and low market size, which will help them gain initial traction.

A transitional business model is used by companies to enter a market (usually a niche) to gain initial traction and prove the idea is sound. The transitional business model helps the company secure the needed capital while having a reality check. It helps shape the long-term vision and a scalable business model.

As a transitional business model proves viable, it helps the company shape its long-term vision, while its built-in strategy is different from the long-term strategy.

The transitional business model will guarantee survival. It will help further refine the long-term strategy and it will also work as a reality check.

As the transitional business model proves viable, the company moves to its long-term strategy execution.

As the business strategy gets rolled out, over the years, it becomes evident and obvious, and yet none managed to pull it off.

When Netflix moved from DVD rental to streaming. DVD rental was the transitional business model that helped Netflix stay in business in the first place.

And yet, when Netflix moved from DVD to streaming it had to apparently change its strategy.

When, in reality, it was rolling out its long-term strategy, shaped by the transitional business model.

Caveat: Frameworks work until suddenly they don’t

When you stumbled upon a “business formula,” you can’t stop there.

That business formula, if you’re lucky, will allow you to succeed in the long term. Yet as more and more people will find that out, that will lose relevance.

And the matter is, the reality is a villain. Things work for years until they suddenly don’t work anymore.

We’ll see some frameworks, but the real deal is not a framework but the inquiry process that makes us discover those frameworks.

In short, the value is in the repeatable process of discovery and not in the discovery itself. A discovery, once spread, loses value.

Master a business strategy process

There isn’t a size-fits-all business playbook that you can apply to all the scenarios.

Some of the business case studies we’ll see throughout this article will show companies that have dominated the tech space in the last decade and more.

While the playbook executed by those companies worked for the time being.

That doesn’t mean you should play according to their playbook. If at all you’ll need to figure out your own.

Thus, what matters is the process behind finding your business playbook and my hope is that this guide will inspire you and give you some good ideas on how to develop your own business strategy process!

Business strategy case studies

We’ll look now at a few case studies of companies that, at the time of this writing, are playing an important role in the business world.

Alibaba Business Strategy.
Amazon Business Strategy.
Apple Business Strategy.
Airbnb Business Strategy.
Baidu Business Strategy.
Booking Business Strategy.
DuckDuckGo Business Strategy.
Google (Alphabet) Business Strategy.

What is a business model’s essence?

Keeping in mind the distinction between business strategy and business models is critical.

The other element used in this guide is a business model essence.

Shortly, I’ve been looking for a way to summarize the key elements of any business in a couple of lines of text:

A Business Model Essence according to FourWeekMBA is a way to find the critical characteristics of any business to have a clear understanding of that business in a few sentences. That can be used to analyze existing businesses. Or to draft your Business Model and keep a strategic and execution focus on the key elements to be implemented in the short-medium term.

Therefore, for the sake of this discussion, you’ll find each company’s business strategy, a business model essence that will help us navigate through the noisy business world.

From there, we’ll see the business strategy of a company.

Alibaba Business Strategy

Business Model Essence : Online Stores Leveraging On An E-Commerce/Marketplace Distribution And Monetization Strategy

As pointed out in Alibaba’s annual report for 2017:

We derive revenue from our four business segments: core commerce, cloud computing, digital media and entertainment, and innovation initiatives and others. We derive most of our revenue from our core commerce segment, which accounted for 85% of our total revenue in fiscal year 2017, while cloud computing, digital media and entertainment, and innovation initiatives and others contributed 4%, 9% and 2%, respectively. We derive a substantial majority of our core commerce revenue from online marketing services.

Alibaba, like Amazon , became an “everything store” in China.

It leveraged its success to build also other media platforms ( Youku Todou and UCWeb). The e-commerce, marketplace business model has become quite common since the dawn of the web.

From that business model tech giants like Amazon , eBay and Alibaba have raised.

Alibaba is an e-commerce platform that generated over $134 billion in revenues in 2022, and over $7.4 billion in net income. Alibaba has six main segments: core commerce (revenues generated in China), international commerce, local consumer services, cloud services, Cainiao (logistics), digital media, and other innovation initiatives.

Alibaba’s vision, mission, and core principles

Alibaba’s Business Strategy starts from its core values defined in its annual report:

Customer First : “The interests of our community of consumers, merchants, and enterprises must be our first”
Teamwork: “ We believe teamwork enables ordinary people to achieve extraordinary things.”
Embrace Change I”n this fast-changing world, we must be flexible, innovative, and ready to adapt to new business conditions in order to maintain sustainability and vitality in our business.”
Integrity “We expect our people to uphold the highest standards of honesty and to deliver on their commitments.”
Passion “We expect our people to approach everything with fire in their belly and never give up on doing what they believe is right.”
Commitment “Employees who demonstrate perseverance and excellence are richly rewarded. Nothing should be taken for granted as we encourage our people to “work happily and live seriously.”

Alibaba’s mission is “ to make it easy to do business anywhere, ” and its vision is “to build the future infrastructure of commerce… a company that would last at least 102 years.”

For that vision to be executed it has three major stakeholders: users, consumers, and merchants.

The focus on the “at least 102 years” might seem fluffy words, yet those are important as this kind of goal helps you keep a long-term vision while executing short-term plans.

It isn’t unusual for founders to set such visions, as they help keep the company on track in the long run.

And this is where a business strategy starts.

All the business models designed by Alibaba will follow its vision, mission, and values they aim to create in the long run.

Read : Alibaba Business Model

Alibaba ecosystem and value proposition

These elements gave rise to an ecosystem made of “consumers, merchants, brands, retailers, other businesses, third-party service providers and strategic alliance partners.”

As Alibaba points out in its annual report “our ecosystem has strong self-reinforcing network effects benefitting its various participants, who are in turn invested in our ecosystem’s growth and success.”

Network effects are a critical ingredient for marketplaces’ success.

To give you an idea, the more buyers join the platform, the more Alibaba’s recommendation engine will be able to suggest relevant items to buy for other customers, and at the same time the more merchants will join in, given the larger and larger business opportunities.

Keeping these network effects going is a vital element of long-term success but also among the greatest challenge of any marketplace that wants to be relevant.

Even though Alibaba’s essence is in online commerce, the company has several business model s running and a business strategy that at its core is evolving quickly.

Thus, the core commerce has made it possible for Alibaba to build a whole new set of “companies within a company.”

From digital entertainment and media, logistics services, payment, financial services, and cloud services with Alibaba Cloud.

Thus, from a successful existing online business model , Alibaba has expanded in many other areas.

And its future business strategy focuses on developing, nurturing, and growing its ecosystem.

More precisely, its strategic long-term goal is to “serve two billion consumers around the world and support ten million businesses to operate profitably on its platforms”

To achieve that Alibaba is focusing on three key activities:

Globalization.
Rural expansion.
And big data and cloud computing.

For its core commerce activities, Alibaba has designed a value proposition that moves around a few pillars:

Broad selection: over 1.5 billion listings as of March 31, 2018.
Convenience: seamless experience anytime, anywhere from online and offline.
Engaging, personalized experience: personalized shopping recommendations and opportunities for social engagement.
Value for money: competitive prices offered via a marketplace business model.
Merchant quality: review and rating system to keep merchants’ quality high.
Authentic products: merchant quality ratings, clear refund, and return policies, and the Alipay escrow system.

From that value proposition , Alibaba has been able to grow its customer base and offer wider and broader products, until it expanded in the service and cloud business.

Amazon Business Strategy

Amazon runs a platform business model as a core model with several business units within. Some units, like Prime and the Advertising business, are highly tied to the e-commerce platform. For instance, Prime helps Amazon reward repeat customers, thus enhancing its platform business. Other units, like AWS, helped improve Amazon’s tech infrastructure.

Business Model Essence : E-Commerce/Marketplace Distribution And Monetization Model Leveraging On Proprietary Infrastructure To Offer Third-Party Services

Starting in 1994 as a bookstore, Amazon soon expanded and became the everything store.

While the company’s core business model is based on its online store.

Amazon launched its physical stores, which generated already over five billion dollars in revenues in 2017.

Amazon Prime (a subscription service) also plays a crucial role in Amazon’s overall business model , as it makes customers spend more and be more loyal to the platform.

Besides, the company also has its cloud infrastructure called AWS, which is a world leader and a business with high margins. Amazon also has an advertising business worth a few billion dollars.

Thus, the Amazon business model mix looks like many companies in one. Amazon measures its success via a customer experience obsession, lowering prices, stable tech infrastructure, and free cash flow generation.

Amazon has a diversified business model. In 2023, Amazon generated nearly $575 billion in revenues while it posted a net profit of over $30 billion. Online stores contributed over 40% of Amazon revenues. Third-party Seller Services and Physical Stores generated the remaining. Amazon AWS, Subscription Services, and Advertising revenues play a significant role within Amazon as fast-growing segments.

Therefore, even though in the minds of most people Amazon is the “everything store.”

In reality, its revenue generation shows us that it has become a way more complex organization, that also has a good chunk of advertising revenue and third-party services.

For instance, Amazon is also a key player with its AWS in the cloud space.

And is well a key player in the digital advertising space, together with Google and Facebook :

The digital advertising industry has become a multi-billion industry dominated by a few key tech players. The industry’s advertising dollars are also fragmented across several small players and publishers across the web. Most of it is consolidated within brands like Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, Bing, Twitter, TikTok, which is growing very quickly, and Pinterest.

Amazon has been widely investing in its technological infrastructure since the 2000s, which eventually turned into a key component of its business model .

Read : Amazon Business Model

Amazon’s vision, mission, and core values

Amazon’s mission statement is to “serve consumers through online and physical stores and focus on selection, price, and convenience.” Amazon’s vision statement is “to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices.”

Jeff Bezos is obsessed with being in “day one,” which as he puts it , “ day 2 is stasis. Followed by irrelevance. Followed by excruciating, painful decline. Followed by death. And that is why it is always Day 1. “

It all starts from there, and to achieve that Jeff Bezos has highlighted a few core values that makeup Amazon ‘s culture and vision :

Customer obsession.
Resist proxies.
Embrace external trends.
High-velocity decision-making.

As pointed out by Amazon , “w hen Amazon.com launched in 1995, it was with the mission “ to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices. ”

This goal continues today, but Amazon ’s customers are worldwide now and have grown to include millions of Consumers, Sellers, Content Creators, and Developers & Enterprises.

Each of these groups has different needs, and we always work to meet those needs, innovating new solutions to make things easier, faster, better, and more cost-effective.”

In this case, Amazon ‘s mission also sounds like a vision statement.

Whatever you want to call it, this input is what makes a company look for long-term goals that keep them on track.

Of course, that doesn’t mean a well-crafted vision and mission statement is all that matters for business success.

Yet, it is what keeps you going when things seem to go awry.

Amazon moved from an online book store to the A-to-Z store it kept its mission almost intact while scaling up.

Start from a proof of concept, then scale up

It is interesting to notice how businesses evolve based on their commercial ability to scale up.

When Amazon started up as a bookstore, it made sense for several reasons, that spanned from logistics to pricing modes and industry specifics.

Yet, when Amazon finally proved that the whole web thing could be commercially viable, it didn’t wait, it grew rapidly.

From music to anything else it didn’t happen overnight, but it did happen quickly.

Thus, this is how Amazon’s mission shifted from “any book in the world” to “anything from A-Z.”

This isn’t a size-fits-all strategy. Amazon chose rapid growth, similar to a blitzscaling process as aggressive growth was a way to preserve itself.

Hadn’t Amazon grown so quickly, it could have been killed.

The opposite approach to this kind of strategy is a bootstrapped business, which is profitable right away and self-sustainable.

Decentralized and distributed value creation: the era of platforms and ecosystems

Before we move forward, I want to highlight a few key elements to have a deeper understanding of both Amazon and Alibaba’s business models and their strategies.

Before digitalization would show its use and commercial viability, most of the value creation processes were internalized.

That meant companies had to employ massive resources to generate value along that chain.

That changed when digitalization allowed the value creation process to be distributed, and we moved from centralized to grassroots content creation.

This is even clearer in the case of platforms, and marketplaces like Amazon and Alibaba.

For instance, where in the past the review process and quality insurance would be done centrally by making sure that the supply complied with the company’s quality guidelines.

Introducing distributed review systems, where the end-users checked against the quality compliance, allowed companies like Alibaba and Amazon to generate network effects, where the more users enriched the platforms with those reviews the more the platform could become valuable.

For that matter though, the main platform’s role will be to fight spam and attempt to trick the system.

Other than that (fighting spam is a challenging task) all the rest is managed at the decentralized level, and the value creation happens when more and more users review products and services on those platforms.

We’re referring here to the review system, but it applies almost to any aspect of a platform.

Amazon for years allowed third-party to feature their stores on Amazon ‘s platform, while they kept the inventory.

This meant an outsourced and distributed inventory system, spread across the supply side.

Therefore, the supply side not only made the platform more valuable by creating compelling offerings.

But it also made it more valuable from the operational standpoint, by allowing a better inventory system, which could be turned quickly.

Therefore, the critical aspect to understand in the digital era is decentralized value creation, which makes the value creation process less expensive for an organization, more valuable to its end users, and more scalable as it benefits from network effects.

How do decentralize value creation?

Many platform-like business models have leveraged a few aspects:

User-generated content (Quora, Facebook , Instagram).
Distributed inventory systems ( Amazon , Alibaba).
Peer-to-peer networks ( Airbnb , Uber).

This implies a paradigm shift.

When you start thinking in terms of platforms, no longer you’ll need a plethora of people taking care of each aspect of it.

Rather you’ll need to understand how the value creation can be outsourced to a community of people and make sure the platform is on top of its game in a few aspects.

For instance, Amazon and Alibaba have to make sure their review system isn’t gamed. Airbnb has to make sure to be able to guarantee safety in the interactions from host to guests and vice-versa.

Quora has to make sure to keep its question machine to keep generating relevant questions for users to answer (the supply-side).

If you grasp this element of a platform, you’re on a good track to understanding how to build a successful platform or marketplace.

Apple Business Strategy

Business Model Label : Product-Based Company Leveraging On Locked-In Ecosystems With A Reversed Razor And Blade Business Strategy

Apple sells its products and resells third-party products in most of its major markets directly to consumers and small and mid-sized businesses through its retail and online stores and its direct sales force.

The Company also employs a variety of indirect distribution channels , such as third-party cellular network carriers, wholesalers, retailers, and value-added resellers.

During 2017, the Company’s net sales through its direct and indirect distribution channels accounted for 28% and 72%, respectively, of total net sales.

Many people look at the iPhone, or the previous products Apple has launched successfully in the last decade and assume that their success is due to those products.

In reality, Apple has followed throughout the years a strategy that focused on five key elements:

Strong branding.
Beautifully crafted products.
Technological innovation.
Strong distribution.
Locked-in ecosystems.

In short, Apple can sell an iPhone at a premium price because it employs a reversed razor and blade strategy.

This strategy implies free access to Apple’s Ecosystem (ex. iTunes, and Apple Store).

That makes the whole experience through Apple’s devices extremely valuable.

Thanks to that experience, the perception of high-end (luxury-like) products, together with a reliable distribution, justifies Apple’s premium prices.

Apple has a business model that is divided into products and services. Apple generated over $383 billion in revenues in 2023, of which over $200 billion came from iPhone sales, $29.36 billion came from Mac sales, $39.84 billion came from accessories and wearables (AirPods, Apple TV, Apple Watch, Beats products, HomePod, iPod touch, and accessories), $28.3 billion came from iPad sales, and $85.2 billion came from services.

Apple’s managed to build a business platform on top of the iPhone, thus creating a strong competitive moat, which lasts to these days:

iPhone and Services sales represented the main revenue drivers in 2022. Within the service revenues, the fastest growing sub-segment was the advertising business Apple built on top of the App Store, followed by the Mac, Accessories & Wearables, and the iPad.

Therefore, Apple’s future success can’t be measured with the same lenses as the last decade.

The real question is: what product will Apple be able to launch successfully?

And keep in mind it’s not just about the product. Apple’s formula summarized above can be replicated over and over again.

But it isn’t a simple formula. And as locked-in ecosystems, in which Apple controls as much as possible, the experience of its users has proved quite successful in the last decade.

That might not be so in the next, given the rise of more decentralized infrastructure.

For that matter, Amazon might be well moving from a reversed razor and blade model:

To a service-based model:

This isn’t surprising, as a service business has a few compelling advantages:

High margins.
A relatively stable revenue stream.
Scalability.

As Apple has relied on home runs with its products, from the new Mac to the iPod, iPhone, and iPhones, that kind of success isn’t easy to replicate, and it makes the company relies on a continuous stream of fresh sales to keep the business growing.

A service business would balance things out.

It is important to remark this isn’t something new to Apple :

When Apple introduced the iPhone, it isn’t like it was an overnight success. It was successful, but it had to create a whole ecosystem to make the iPhone a continuous source of growth for the company!

When it comes to business strategy, as pointed out in Apple’s annual reports:

The Company is committed to bringing the best user experience to its customers through its innovative hardware, software and services. The Company’s business strategy leverages its unique ability to design and develop its own operating systems, hardware, application software and services to provide its customers products and solutions with innovative design, superior ease-of-use and seamless integration.

Understanding this part is critical. As I explained above, at the time of this writing many think of Apple as the “iPhone company.”

Yet Apple is way more than that, and its business strategy is a mixture of creating ecosystems by leveraging on these pillars:

Operating systems.
Applications software.
Innovative design.
Ease-of-use.
Seamless Integration.

Those elements together make Apple ‘s products successful. As Apple further explained:

As part of its strategy, the Company continues to expand its platform for the discovery and delivery of digital content and applications through its Digital Content and Services, which allows customers to discover and download or stream digital content, iOS, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV applications, and books through either a Mac or Windows personal computer or through iPhone, iPad and iPod touch® devices (“iOS devices”), Apple TV, Apple Watch and HomePod.

Once again, it isn’t anymore about creating a product, but about generating self-serve ecosystems.

How do you support those ecosystems?

It depends on what’s your target. A media company will primarily need an ecosystem made of content creators (take Quora or Facebook or YouTube ).

In many cases, a digital media company over time has to be able to nurture several communities to create a thriving ecosystem.

For instance, large tech companies or startups, often rely on several communities:

Programmers and developers ( Google , Apple ).
Content creators and publishers ( Google , Quora, YouTube ).
Artists and creative talents ( Apple , YouTube ).

In Apple ‘s case though, the first ecosystem is the community of developers building third-party software products that complement the company’s offering:

The Company also supports a community for the development of third-party software and hardware products and digital content that complement the Company’s offerings.

When you combine that with a high-touch strategy (where skilled and knowledgeable salespeople interact with customers) you create a flywheel, where customers are retained for longer, the brand grows as a result of this high-touch activity which creates a better post-sale experience and triggers word of mouth and referral from existing customers:

The Company believes a high-quality buying experience with knowledgeable salespersons who can convey the value of the Company’s products and services greatly enhances its ability to attract and retain customers.Therefore, the Company’s strategy also includes building and expanding its own retail and online stores and its third-party distribution network to effectively reach more customers and provide them with a high-quality sales and post-sales support experience.The Company believes ongoing investment in research and development (“R&D”), marketing and advertising is critical to the development and sale of innovative products, services and technologies.

Read : Apple Business Model

Airbnb Business Strategy

Business Model Essence : Peer-To-Peer House-Sharing Network With Fee-Based Monetization Strategy

As a peer-to-peer network, Airbnb allows individuals to rent from private owners for a fee.

Airbnb charges guests a service fee between 5% and 15% of the reservation subtotal; While the commission from hosts is generally 3%.

Airbnb also charges hosts who offer experiences a 20% service fee on the total price.

The digitalization that happened in the last two decades has facilitated the creation of peer-to-peer platforms in which business models disrupted the hospitality model created in the previous century by hotel chains like Marriott, Holiday Inn, and Hilton.

Airbnb is a platform business model making money by charging guests a service fee between 5% and 15% of the reservation, while the commission from hosts is generally 3%. For instance, on a $100 booking per night set by a host, Airbnb might make as much as $15, split between host and guest fees.

Airbnb is quickly branching out toward offering more experiences. We can call Airbnb the “marketplace of experiences.”

In short, just like Amazon started from books, Airbnb has started from house-sharing.

But that is the starting point, which gives the innovative company enough traction to validate its whole business model and expand to other areas.

The principal aim of Airbnb is to control the whole experience for its users. This means creating an end-to-end travel experience that embraces the entire process .

Thus, it’s not surprising that we’ll see Airbnb expanding its marketplace to more and more areas. This is also shown by the fact that Airbnb might soon offer bundled travel packages .

Just as we’ve seen in the case of Alibaba and Amazon , Airbnb follows a marketplace logic, where it needs to make the interactions between its key users (hosts and guests) as smooth as possible, with an emphasis on safety.

As a platform, Airbnb initially used a strategy of improving the quality of its supply by employing freelance photographers that could take pictures of host homes.

This, in turn, made those homes more interesting for guests, as they could appreciate those homes more.

As many people in real estate might know, the quality of the pictures is critical.

Although this might sound trivial, this is what improved the Airbnb supply side.

Indeed with better and professionally taken images, Airbnb improved its reach via search engines (yes, search engines are thirsty for fresh and original content, images comprised).

And it enhanced the experience of its potential customers.

Now Airbnb is converting its business model to digital experiences. In addition to changing the whole strategy.

Whereas Airbnb focused in the past on covering major cities across the world.

Changing travel habits made Airbnb focus on digital experiences and local, extra-metropolitan areas throughout the pandemic.

While, post-pandemic, as people travel for longer stays, the whole platform has been structured around these.

In 2022, Airbnb enabled $63.2 Billion in Gross Booking Value, generating $8.4 Billion in service fee revenues. In 2022, there were $393.7 Million Nights and Experiences Booked, ad an average service fee of 13.3%, at an Average Value per Booking of $161.

Read : Airbnb Business Model

Baidu Business Strategy

Business Model Essence : Online Marketing Free Services Advertising-Supported Revenue Model

Baidu makes money primarily via online marketing services (advertising). In fact, in 2017, Baidu made about $11.24 in online marketing services and a remaining almost $1.8 billion through other sources. According to Statista,

Baidu has an overall search market share of 73.8% of the Chinese market. Other sources of revenues comprise membership services of iQIYI (an innovative market-leading online entertainment service provider in China) and financial services.

As any digital business, Baidu needs a continuous stream of traffic to monetize its pages. In 2017 Baidu managed to lower its Traffic Acquisition Costs as a percentage of its revenues at 11.4%. Primarily driven from its Baidu Union Members, and its iQIYI services. The former allows Baidu to have inexpensive content served by third-parties members. The latter will enable Baidu to have high-quality premium content at a low cost.

At first sight, Baidu might seem the mirror image of Google , but in China.

However, this is a superficial view. While Baidu has followed in China a similar path to Google , it did take advantage of the fact that Google wasn’t available there, to build its dominant position.

Baidu also has a more efficient cost structure than Google. It had also introduced innovations in its search products (like voice search devices for kids) at a time when Google wasn’t there yet.

Read : Baidu Business Model

Baidu mission: two-pillar business strategy and value propositions acting as a glue for its key users/customers

In the past years, Baidu has followed an expansion business strategy focused on acquiring assets and companies that complemented its core business model .

As the leading Chinese search provider, in 2017, Baidu updated its mission to “ Baidu aims to make a complex world simpler through technology.”

This mission is achieved via a two-pillar strategy:

Strengthening the mobile foundation (similar to Google’s mobile-first).
And leading in artificial intelligence.

Baidu’s key partners comprise users, customers, Baidu union members, and content providers.

For each of those critical segments, Baidu has drafted a fundamental value proposition .

Thus, to generate a value chain that works for these stakeholders, Baidu has to balance it with a diversified value proposition :

Users: enjoying Baidu search experience want a search engine that gives them relevant results.
Customers: with 775,000 active online marketing customers in 2017, consisting of SMEs, large domestic businesses, and multinational companies, distributed across retail and e-commerce, network service, medical and healthcare, franchise investment, financial services, education, online games, transportation, construction and decoration, and business services. Those businesses look for a trackable, and sustainable ROI for their paid advertising campaigns. By bidding on keywords, they can target specific audiences.
Baidu Union Member: share revenues with Baidy by displaying banner ads on their sites in relevant spaces filled by the Baidu search algorithm (think of it as Google’s AdSense Network ). Those publishers and sites can generate additional revenues and monetize their content without relying on complex infrastructure, that instead is employed by Baidu.
Content Providers: video copyright holders, app owners who list their apps on the Baidu app store, users who contribute their valuable and copyrighted content to Baidu products, and publishers. Those users get visibility or money in exchange for this content. Baidu has to make sure to allow those content providers to get in exchange for their work and creativity visibility and revenues.

Understanding how the value proposition for each player comes together is critical to understanding the business decisions a company like Baidu makes over time.

For instance, as Baidu (like Google ) moves more and more toward AI, the need to balance the value proposition for Baidu Union Members might fickle.

Booking Business Strategy

Business Model Essence : House-Sharing Platform Leveraging On A Two-Sided Marketplace With A Commission-Based Revenue Model

Booking Holdings is the company that controls six main brands that comprise Booking.com, priceline.com, KAYAK, agoda.com, Rentalcars.com, and OpenTable.

Over 76% of the company’s revenues in 2017 came primarily via travel reservations commissions and travel insurance fees.

Almost 17% came from merchant fees, and the remaining revenues came from advertising earned via KAYAK.

As a distribution strategy, the company spent over $4.5 billion on performance-based and brand advertising.

Booking Holdings is the company the controls six main brands that comprise Booking.com, priceline.com, KAYAK, agoda.com, Rentalcars.com, and OpenTable. Over 76% of the company revenues in 2017 came primarily via travel reservations commisions and travel insurance fees. Almost 17% came from merchant fees, and the remaining revenues came from advertising earned via KAYAK. As distribution strategy, the company spent over $4.5 billion in performance-based and brand advertising.

Read : Booking Business Model

Booking mission, value proposition, and key players

Booking’s mission is to “help people experience the world.” Booking does that via a few primary brands:

Booking.com.
priceline.com.
Rentalcars.com.

The mission of helping people experience the world is executed via three primary value propositions delivered to consumers, travelers, and business partners:

Consumers are provided what Booking calls “the best choices and prices at any time, in any place, on any device.”
People and travelers can easily find, book, and experience their travel desires.
Business partners (like Hotels featured on Booking.com) are provided with platforms, tools, and insights in exchange.

Boomedium-term term strategy is focused on:

Leveraging technology to provide the best experience.
Growing partnerships with travel service providers and restaurants.
Investing in profitable and sustainable growth.

DuckDuckGo Business Strategy

Business Model Essence : Privacy-based Search Engine Built On Google’s Weakness With An affiliate-based Revenue Model

DuckDuckGo makes money in two simple ways: Advertising and Affiliate Marketing.

Advertising is shown based on the keywords typed into the search box. Affiliate revenues come from Amazon and eBay affiliate programs.

When users buy after getting on those sites through DuckDuckGo the company collects a small commission.

DuckDuckGo makes money in two simple ways: Advertising and Affiliate Marketing. Advertising is shown based on the keywords typed into the search box. Affiliate revenues come from Amazon and eBay affiliate programs. When users buy after getting on those sites through DuckDuckGo the company collects a small commission.

While this model might not sound that exciting. DuckDuckGo managed to grow quickly by leveraging Google’s primary weakness: users’ privacy. Where Google’s primary asset is made of users’ data. DuckDuckGo throws that data away on the fly:

It is important to remark that DuckDuckGo is still figuring out a business model that can make it sustainable in the long term.

Indeed, the company got a venture round of $10 million back in August 2018.

DuckDuckGo will be tweaking its business model in the coming years, to reach a “ business model /market fit.”

Read : DuckDuckGo Business Model

Read : DuckDuckGo Story

Google (Alphabet) Business Strategy

Business Model Essence : Free Search Engine Distributed Across Hardware, Browsers, And Members’ Websites With An Hidden Revenue Generation Model

As of 2017, over ninety billion dollars, which consisted of 86% of Google ’s revenues came from advertising networks.

The remaining fraction (about 13%) came from Apps, Google Cloud, and Hardware. While a bit more than 1% came from bets like Access, Calico, CapitalG, GV, Nest, Verily, Waymo, and X.

Google business model is changing over the years.

Even though advertising is still its cash cow, Google has been diversifying its revenues in other areas.

While in 2015 90% of Google’s revenues came from advertising, in 2017, advertising revenues represented 86%.

Other revenues grew from about 10% in 2015 to almost 13% in 2017.

Google (now Alphabet) primarily makes money through advertising. The Google search engine, while free, is monetized with paid advertising. In 2023, Alphabet generated over $175B from Google search, $31.51B billion from the Network members (Adsense and AdMob), $31.31B billion from YouTube Ads, $33B from Google Cloud, and $34.69B billion from other sources (Google Play, Hardware devices, and other services). And $1.53B from its other bets.

Why did Google get there? And where is Google going next? To understand that you need to understand the “moonshot thinking.”

Read : Google Business Model

Read : Google Cost Structure

Read : Baidu vs. Google

Understanding Google’s moonshot thinking and a breakthrough approach to business

As highlighted in the Alphabet annual report for 2018:

Many companies get comfortable doing what they have always done, making only incremental changes. This incrementalism leads to irrelevance over time, especially in technology, where change tends to be revolutionary, not evolutionary. People thought we were crazy when we acquired YouTube and Android and when we launched Chrome, but those efforts have matured into major platforms for digital video and mobile devices and a safer, popular browser. We continue to look toward the future and continue to invest for the long-term. As we said in the original founders’ letter, we will not shy away from high-risk, high-reward projects that we believe in because they are the key to our long-term success.

Understanding the moonshot approach to business is critical to understanding where Google (now Alphabet) got where it is today, and where it’s headed next.

Since the first shareholders’ letter from Google’s founders, Brin and Page they highlighted that “ Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one.”

Google has successfully built ecosystems that today drive

To understand where Google is going next, you need to look at the AI Economy , in which the tech giant is trying to lead the pack.

Whether or not it will be successful will highly depend on its ability to keep creating successful ecosystems, just as Google has done with Google Maps (you might not realize but Google Maps powers up quite a large number of applications) and Android.

At the time of this writing, Google is widely investing in other areas, such as:

Voice search.
AI and machine learning applications.
Self-driving cars.
And other bets.

If that is not sufficient Google has made several moves in different spaces, to keep its dominance on mobile, while moving toward voice search, like the investment in KaiOS, which business model is interesting as it finally allows an ecosystem to be built on top of cheap mobile devices in developing countries:

As feature phones powered by KaiOS have access to mobile apps, connectivity and voice search. KaiOS feature phone business model wants to bring connectivity and the digital revolution to those developing countries (like India and Africa) that have missed out on the smartphone wave due to too high costs of those devices.

Besides, KaiOS might be well suited for the IoT revolution!

KaiOS is a mobile operating system built on the ashes of the discontinued Mozilla OS. Indeed, KaiOS has developed a robust standalone mobile operating system that turns feature phones (so-called “dumb phones”) into smartphones-like phones.

That is why Google keeps making “smaller bets in areas that might seem very speculative or even strange when compared to its current businesses.”

Those other bets made “just” $595 million to Google in 2018.

This represented 0.4% of Google ‘s overall revenues , compared to the over $136 billion coming from the other segments.

Google ‘s North Star is its mission of “ organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful.”

Read : KaiOS Business Model

Let’s go through a few other tips for a successful business strategy.

Problem-first approach

The customer-problem quadrant by LEANSTACK’s Ash Maurya is a great starting point to define and understand the problem, that as an entrepreneur you will going to solve.

Indeed, a successful business is such, based on the market’s rewards for the entrepreneur’s ability to solve a problem.

Keep in mind that defining and understanding problems in the real world is one of the most difficult things (that is why entrepreneurship is so hard).

To properly stumble on the right definition of the problem you’re solving, there might be some fine-tuning going on, which in the business world we like to call product-market fit .

Business engineering skills

Business analysis is a research discipline that helps driving change within an organization by identifying the key elements and processes that drive value. Business analysis can also be used in Identifying new business opportunities or how to take advantage of existing business opportunities to grow your business in the marketplace.

Another key element is not to lose sight of the context you’re operating.

As such, analyzing that properly might require some business engineering skills .

To simplify your life you can use the FourWeekMBA business analysis framework.

Don’t strategize on a piece of paper

Strategies always work well on a piece of paper.

Yet when execution comes suddenly we can realize all the drawbacks of that.

In very few, rare cases, a designed strategy will work as expected.

However, the reason we plan and strategize isn’t just to make things work as we’d like them to.

But to communicate a vision we have to those people (employees, customers, stakeholders) who will help us get there.

That is why when we strategize it’s important not to lose sight of the essence of our strategy, which is the long-term vision we have for our business.

The rest is execution, practice, and a lot of experimentation!

The innovation loop

Entrepreneurship is a continuous quest for real-world problem-solving. The success of a business is measured by how well you helped people solve those problems. While entrepreneurs can rely on methodologies, systems, and processes, they also need to know when to revert to instinct and leverage on their experience.

Innovation starts by tweaking, testing, and experimenting also in unexpected ways.

Often though, as a business strategy is documented after the fact, it seems as if it was all part of a plan.

In most cases, the innovation loop starts by stumbling upon that thing that will have a great impact on your business.

Therefore, as an entrepreneur, you need to keep pushing on those models that worked out.

But also to be on the lookout for new ways of doing things.

Barbell approach

A Barbell strategy consists of making sure that 90% of your capital is safe, and use the remaining 10%, or on risky investments. Applied to business strategy, this means having a binary approach. On the one hand, extremely conservative. On the other, extremely aggressive, thus creating a potent mix.

In a barbel approach we want to have a clear distinction between two domains:

Core business : on the core business side, where you have a consolidated strategy, and a business model that has proved to work, it’s important to be structured. This means having a clear culture, following given processes, and slowly evolving your business model.
New bets : as your business model will become outdated over time, and that might happen also very quickly, you need to be on the lookout for new opportunities emerging, also in new, completely unrelated business fields.

For instance, a tech giant like Google, has a part of its business skewed toward a few bets it placed on industries that are completely unrelated to its core business (search).

Those bets are not contributing at all to its bottom line (only some of those bets are generating revenues but those are extremely marginal compared to the overall turnover of the company).

However, those might turn out widely successful (or huge failures) in the years to come.

Of Google’s (Alphabet) over $307.39 billion in revenue for 2023, Google also generated for the first time, well over 1.5 billion dollars in revenue from its bets, which Google considers potential moonshots (companies that might open up new industries). Google’s bets also generated a loss for the company of over $4 billion in the same year. In short, Google is using the money generated by search and betting it on other innovative industries, which are ramping up in 2023.

Thus, with a barbell approach, we want to consolidate what we have. But also be open to what might be coming next!

Business Explorers

Strategic analysis thinking tools.

Strategic analysis is a process to understand the organization’s environment and competitive landscape to formulate informed business decisions, to plan for the organizational structure and long-term direction. Strategic planning is also useful to experiment with business model design and assess the fit with the long-term vision of the business.

Strategic analysis is a process to understand the organization’s environment and competitive landscape to formulate informed business decisions , to plan for the organizational structure and long-term direction. Strategic planning is also useful to experiment with business model design and assess the fit with the long-term vision of the business.

Business model canvas

The business model canvas aims to provide a keen understanding of your business model to provide strategic insights about your customers, product/service, and financial structure;

so that you can make better business decisions.

Blitzscaling canvas

In this article, I’ll focus on the Blitzscaling business model canvas. This is a model based on the concept of Blitzscaling.

That is a particular process of massive growth under uncertainty, and that prioritizes speed over efficiency. It focuses on market domination to create a first-scaler advantage in a scenario of uncertainty.

Pretotyping

The pretotyping methodology comes from Alberto Savoia’s work summarized in the book “The Right It: Why So Many Ideas Fail and How to Make Sure Yours Succeed.” This framework is a mixture of the words “pretend” and “prototype” and it helps to answer such questions (about the product or service to build) as: Would I use it? How, how often, and when would I use it? Would other people buy it? How much would they be willing to pay for it? How, how often, and when would they use it?

Pretotyping is a mixture of the words “pretend” and “prototype,” and it is a methodology used to validate business ideas to improve the chances of building a product or service that people want.

The pretotyping methodology comes from Alberto Savoia’s work summarized in the book “The Right It: Why So Many Ideas Fail and How to Make Sure Yours Succeed.”

This framework is a mixture of the words “pretend” and “prototype,” and it helps to answer such questions (about the product or service to build) as: Would I use it? How, how often, and when would I use it?

Would other people buy it? How much would they be willing to pay for it? How, how often, and when would they use it?

Value innovation and blue ocean strategy

A blue ocean is a strategy where the boundaries of existing markets are redefined, and new uncontested markets are created. At its core, there is value innovation, for which uncontested markets are created, where competition is made irrelevant. And the cost-value trade-off is broken. Thus, companies following a blue ocean strategy offer much more value at a lower cost for the end customers.

A blue ocean is a strategy where the boundaries of existing markets are redefined, and new uncontested markets are created.

At its core, there is value innovation, for which uncontested markets are created, where competition is made irrelevant. And the cost-value trade-off is broken.

Thus, companies following a blue ocean strategy offer much more value at a lower cost for the end customers.

Growth hacking process

Growth hacking is a process of rapid experimentation, coupled with the understanding of the whole funnel, where marketing, product, data analysis, and engineering work together to achieve rapid growth. The growth hacking process goes through four key stages of analyzing, ideating, prioritizing and testing.

The growth hacking process goes through four key stages analyzing, ideating, prioritizing, and testing.

Pirate metrics

Venture capitalist, Dave McClure, coined the acronym AARRR which is a simplified model that enables to understand what metrics and channels to look at, at each stage for the users’ path toward becoming customers and referrers of a brand.

Venture capitalist , Dave McClure, coined the acronym AARRR which is a simplified model that enables us to understand what metrics and channels to look at. At each stage of the users’ path toward becoming customers and referrers of a brand.

Engines of growth

In the Lean Startup, Eric Ries defined the engine of growth as “the mechanism that startups use to achieve sustainable growth.” He described sustainable growth as following a simple rule, “new customers come from the actions of past customers.” The three engines of growth are the sticky engine, the viral engine, and the paid engine. Each of those can be measured and tracked by a few key metrics.

In the Lean Startup, Eric Ries defined the engine of growth as “the mechanism that startups use to achieve sustainable growth.”

He described sustainable growth as following a simple rule, “new customers come from the actions of past customers.”

The three engines of growth are the sticky engine, the viral engine, and the paid engine. Each of those can be measured and tracked by a few key metrics, and it helps plan your strategic moves.

The RTVN model is a straightforward framework that can help you design a business model when you’re at the very early stage of figuring out what you need to make it succeed.

Sales cycle

A sales cycle is the process that your company takes to sell your services and products. In simple words, it’s a series of steps that your sales reps need to go through with prospects that lead up to a closed sale.

A sales cycle is the process that your company takes to sell your services and products.

In simple words, it’s a series of steps that your sales reps need to go through with prospects that lead up to a closed sale.

Planning ahead of time the steps your sales team needs to take to close a big contract can help you grow the revenues for your business.

Comparable analysis

A comparable company analysis is a process that enables the identification of similar organizations to be used as a comparison to understand the business and financial performance of the target company. To find comparables you can look at two key profiles: the business and financial profile. From the comparable company analysis it is possible to understand the competitive landscape of the target organization.

To find comparables, you can look at two key profiles: the business and economic profiles.

From the comparable company analysis, it is possible to understand the competitive landscape of the target organization.

Porter’s five forces

Porter’s Five Forces is a model that helps organizations to gain a better understanding of their industries and competition. Published for the first time by Professor Michael Porter in his book “Competitive Strategy” in the 1980s. The model breaks down industries and markets by analyzing them through five forces

Porter’s Five Forces is a model that helps organizations to gain a better understanding of their industries and competition.

It was published for the first time by Professor Michael Porter in his book “Competitive Strategy” in the 1980s.

The model breaks down industries and markets by analyzing them through five forces which you can use to have a first assessment of the market you’re in.

Porter’s Generic Strategies

In his book, “Competitive Advantage,” in 1985, Porter conceptualized the concept of competitive advantage, by looking at two key aspects. Industry attractiveness, and the company’s strategic positioning. The latter, according to Porter, can be achieved either via cost leadership, differentiation, or focus.

Porter’s Value Chain

In his 1985 book Competitive Advantage, Porter explains that a value chain is a collection of processes that a company performs to create value for its consumers. As a result, he asserts that value chain analysis is directly linked to competitive advantage. Porter’s Value Chain Model is a strategic management tool developed by Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter. The tool analyses a company’s value chain – defined as the combination of processes that the company uses to make money.

Porter’s Diamond Model

Porter’s Diamond Model is a diamond-shaped framework that explains why specific industries in a nation become internationally competitive while those in other nations do not. The model was first published in Michael Porter’s 1990 book The Competitive Advantage of Nations. This framework looks at the firm strategy, structure/rivalry, factor conditions, demand conditions, related and supporting industries.

Bowman’s Strategy Clock

Bowman’s Strategy Clock is a marketing model concerned with strategic positioning. The model was developed by economists Cliff Bowman and David Faulkner, who argued that a company or brand had several ways of positioning a product based on price and perceived value. Bowman’s Strategy Clock seeks to illustrate graphically that product positioning is based on the dimensions of price and perceived value.

VMOST Analysis

The VMOST Analysis is a tool that allows a business to evaluate its core strategies in terms of whether the supporting activities of that strategy are being carried out. The VMOST analysis tries to answer that by looking at five core elements: vision, mission, objectives, strategies, and tactics.

Fishbone Diagram

The Fishbone Diagram is a diagram-based technique used in brainstorming to identify potential causes for a problem, thus it is a visual representation of cause and effect. The problem or effect serves as the head of the fish. Possible causes of the problem are listed on the individual “bones” of the fish. This encourages problem-solving teams to consider a wide range of alternatives.

GE McKinsey Matrix

The GE McKinsey Matrix was developed in the 1970s after General Electric asked its consultant McKinsey to develop a portfolio management model. This matrix is a strategy tool that provides guidance on how a corporation should prioritize its investments among its business units, leading to three possible scenarios: invest, protect, harvest, and divest.

VRIO Framework

The VRIO framework is a tool that businesses can use to identify and then protect the factors that give them a long-term competitive advantage. The VRIO framework will help assess reality based on four key elements that make up its name (VRIO): value, rarity, imitability, and organization. VRIO is a holistic framework to assess the business.

3C Analysis

The 3C Analysis Business Model was developed by Japanese business strategist Kenichi Ohmae. The 3C Model is a marketing tool that focuses on customers, competitors, and the company. At the intersection of these three variables lies an effective marketing strategy to gain a potential competitive advantage and build a lasting company.

AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire, and action. That is a model that is used in marketing to describe the potential journey a customer might go through before purchasing a product or service. The AIDA model helps organizations focus their efforts when optimizing their marketing activities based on the customers’ journeys.

AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire, and action. This is a model that is used in marketing to describe the potential journey a customer might go through, before purchasing a product or service. The variation of the AIDA model is the CAB model and the AIDCAS model.

PESTEL analysis

The PESTEL analysis is a framework that can help marketers assess whether macro-economic factors are affecting an organization. This is a critical step that helps organizations identify potential threats and weaknesses that can be used in other frameworks such as SWOT or to gain a broader and better understanding of the overall marketing environment.

The PESTEL analysis is a framework that can help marketers assess whether macro-economic factors are affecting an organization.

This is a critical step that helps organizations identify potential threats and weaknesses. That can be used in other frameworks such as SWOT or to gain a broader and better understanding of the overall marketing environment.

Technology adoption curve

In his book, Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey A. Moore shows a model that dissects and represents the stages of adoption of high-tech products. The model goes through five stages based on the psychographic features of customers at each stage: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggard.

The technology adoption curve is a model that goes through five stages. Each of those stages (innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggard) has a specific psychographic that makes that group of people ready to adopt a tech product.

This simple concept can help you define the right target for your business strategy.

Business model essence

A Business Model Essence, according to FourWeekMBA, is a way to find the critical characteristics of any business to have a clear understanding of that business in a few sentences.

That can be used to analyze existing businesses. Or to draft your Business Model and keep a strategic and execution focus on the key elements to be implemented in the short-medium term.

FourWeekMBA business model framework

An effective business model has to focus on two dimensions: the people dimension and the financial dimension. The people dimension will allow you to build a product or service that is 10X better than existing ones and a solid brand. The financial dimension will help you develop proper distribution channels by identifying the people that are willing to pay for your product or service and make it financially sustainable in the long run.

The financial dimension will help you develop proper distribution channels by identifying the people that are willing to pay for your product or service and make it financially sustainable in the long run.

TAM, SAM, and SOM

A total addressable market or TAM is the available market for a product or service. That is a metric usually leveraged by startups to understand the business potential of an industry. Typically, a large addressable market is appealing to venture capitalists willing to back startups with extensive growth potential.

Understanding your TAM, SAM and SOM can help you navigate the market you’re in and to have a laser focus on the market you can reach with your product and service.

Brand Building

Brand building is the set of activities that help companies to build an identity that can be recognized by its audience. Thus, it works as a mechanism of identification through core values that signal trust and that help build long-term relationships between the brand and its key stakeholders.

Value Proposition Design

A value proposition is about how you create value for customers. While many entrepreneurial theories draw from customers’ problems and pain points, value can also be created via demand generation, which is about enabling people to identify with your brand, thus generating demand for your products and services.

Product-Market Fit

Marc Andreessen defined Product/market fit as “being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market.” According to Andreessen, that is a moment when a product or service has its place in the market, thus enabling traction for the company offering that product or service.

Freemium Decision Model

Organizational Design And Structures

An organizational structure allows companies to shape their business model according to several criteria (like products, segments, geography and so on) that would enable information to flow through the organizational layers for better decision-making, cultural development, and goals alignment across employees, managers, and executives.

Speed-Reversibility Matrix

Minimum Viable Product

SWOT Analysis

A SWOT Analysis is a framework used for evaluating the business’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It can aid in identifying the problematic areas of your business so that you can maximize your opportunities. It will also alert you to the challenges your organization might face in the future.

Revenue Modeling

Revenue modeling is a process of incorporating a sustainable financial model for revenue generation within a business model design. Revenue modeling can help to understand what options make more sense in creating a digital business from scratch; alternatively, it can help in analyzing existing digital businesses and reverse engineer them.

Business Experimentation

Business experiments help entrepreneurs test their hypotheses. Rather than define the problem by making too many hypotheses, a digital entrepreneur can formulate a few assumptions, design experiments, and check them against the actions of potential customers. Once measured, the impact, the entrepreneur, will be closer to define the problem.

Business Analysis

In the 1970s, Bruce D. Henderson, founder of the Boston Consulting Group, came up with The Product Portfolio (aka BCG Matrix, or Growth-share Matrix), which would look at a successful business product portfolio based on potential growth and market shares. It divided products into four main categories: cash cows, pets (dogs), question marks, and stars.

Ansoff Matrix

You can use the Ansoff Matrix as a strategic framework to understand what growth strategy is more suited based on the market context. Developed by mathematician and business manager Igor Ansoff, it assumes a growth strategy can be derived by whether the market is new or existing, and the product is new or existing.

Key takeaway

I hope that in this guide you learned the critical aspects related to business strategy, with an emphasis on the entrepreneurial world. If business strategy would only be an academic discipline disjoined from reality, that would still be an interesting domain, yet purely speculative.

However, as a business strategy can be used as a useful tool to leverage on to build companies, hopefully, this guide will help you out in navigating through the seemingly noisy and confusing business world, dominated by technology. As a last but critical caveat, there isn’t a single way toward building a successful business.

And oftentimes the way you choose to build a business is really up to you, how you want to impact a community of people and your vision for the future!

Other resources:

Types of Business Models You Need to Know
What Is a Business Model Canvas? Business Model Canvas Explained
Blitzscaling Business Model Innovation Canvas In A Nutshell
What Is a Value Proposition? Value Proposition Canvas Explained
What Is a Lean Startup Canvas? Lean Startup Canvas Explained
How to Write a One-Page Business Plan
How to Build a Great Business Plan According to Peter Thiel
How To Create A Business Model
What Is Business Model Innovation And Why It Matters
What Is Blitzscaling And Why It Matters
Business Model Vs. Business Plan: When And How To Use Them
The Five Key Factors That Lead To Successful Tech Startups
Business Model Tools for Small Businesses and Startups

Additional Business Strategy Tactics

Blue ocean player, blue sea player.

Constructive Disruptor

A consumer brand company like Procter & Gamble (P&G) defines “Constructive Disruption” as: a willingness to change, adapt, and create new trends and technologies that will shape our industry for the future. According to P&G, it moves around four pillars: lean innovation, brand building, supply chain, and digitalization & data analytics.

Disruptive innovation as a term was first described by Clayton M. Christensen, an American academic and business consultant whom The Economist called “the most influential management thinker of his time.” Disruptive innovation describes the process by which a product or service takes hold at the bottom of a market and eventually displaces established competitors, products, firms, or alliances.

Niche player

A microniche is a subset of potential customers within a niche. In the era of dominating digital super-platforms, identifying a microniche can kick off the strategy of digital businesses to prevent competition against large platforms. As the microniche becomes a niche, then a market, scale becomes an option.

Blitzscaler

The Blitzscaling business model canvas is a model based on the concept of Blitzscaling, which is a particular process of massive growth under uncertainty, and that prioritizes speed over efficiency and focuses on market domination to create a first-scaler advantage in a scenario of uncertainty.

Continuous Blitzscaler

The Amazon Flywheel or Amazon Virtuous Cycle is a strategy that leverages on customer experience to drive traffic to the platform and third-party sellers. That improves the selections of goods, and Amazon further improves its cost structure so it can decrease prices which spins the flywheel.

OYO business model is a mixture of platform and brand, where the company started primarily as an aggregator of homes across India, and it quickly moved to other verticals, from leisure to co-working and corporate travel. In a sort of octopus business strategy of expansion to cover the whole spectrum of short-term real estate.

What is business strategy?

What are examples of business strategies.

Things like product differentiation, business model innovation, technological innovation, more capital for growth, can all be moats that organizations focus on to gain an edge. Depending on the context, industry, and scenario, a business strategy might be more or less effective; that is why testing and experimentation are critical elements.

Connected Strategy Frameworks

ADKAR Model

The ADKAR model is a management tool designed to assist employees and businesses in transitioning through organizational change. To maximize the chances of employees embracing change, the ADKAR model was developed by author and engineer Jeff Hiatt in 2003. The model seeks to guide people through the change process and importantly, ensure that people do not revert to habitual ways of operating after some time has passed.

Business Model Canvas

The business model canvas is a framework proposed by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur in Busines Model Generation enabling the design of business models through nine building blocks comprising: key partners, key activities, value propositions, customer relationships, customer segments, critical resources, channels, cost structure, and revenue streams.

Lean Startup Canvas

The lean startup canvas is an adaptation by Ash Maurya of the business model canvas by Alexander Osterwalder, which adds a layer that focuses on problems, solutions, key metrics, unfair advantage based, and a unique value proposition. Thus, starting from mastering the problem rather than the solution.

Blitzscaling Canvas

Blue Ocean Strategy

Business Analysis Framework

Balanced Scorecard

First proposed by accounting academic Robert Kaplan, the balanced scorecard is a management system that allows an organization to focus on big-picture strategic goals. The four perspectives of the balanced scorecard include financial, customer, business process, and organizational capacity. From there, according to the balanced scorecard, it’s possible to have a holistic view of the business.

Blue Ocean Strategy

GAP Analysis

A gap analysis helps an organization assess its alignment with strategic objectives to determine whether the current execution is in line with the company’s mission and long-term vision. Gap analyses then help reach a target performance by assisting organizations to use their resources better. A good gap analysis is a powerful tool to improve execution.

GE McKinsey Model

McKinsey 7-S Model

The McKinsey 7-S Model was developed in the late 1970s by Robert Waterman and Thomas Peters, who were consultants at McKinsey & Company. Waterman and Peters created seven key internal elements that inform a business of how well positioned it is to achieve its goals, based on three hard elements and four soft elements.

McKinsey’s Seven Degrees

McKinsey’s Seven Degrees of Freedom for Growth is a strategy tool. Developed by partners at McKinsey and Company, the tool helps businesses understand which opportunities will contribute to expansion, and therefore it helps to prioritize those initiatives.

McKinsey Horizon Model

The McKinsey Horizon Model helps a business focus on innovation and growth. The model is a strategy framework divided into three broad categories, otherwise known as horizons. Thus, the framework is sometimes referred to as McKinsey’s Three Horizons of Growth.

Porter’s Five Forces

According to Michael Porter, a competitive advantage, in a given industry could be pursued in two key ways: low cost (cost leadership), or differentiation. A third generic strategy is focus. According to Porter a failure to do so would end up stuck in the middle scenario, where the company will not retain a long-term competitive advantage.

Porter’s Value Chain Model

PESTEL Analysis

Scenario Planning

Businesses use scenario planning to make assumptions on future events and how their respective business environments may change in response to those future events. Therefore, scenario planning identifies specific uncertainties – or different realities and how they might affect future business operations. Scenario planning attempts at better strategic decision making by avoiding two pitfalls: underprediction, and overprediction.

STEEPLE Analysis

The STEEPLE analysis is a variation of the STEEP analysis. Where the step analysis comprises socio-cultural, technological, economic, environmental/ecological, and political factors as the base of the analysis. The STEEPLE analysis adds other two factors such as Legal and Ethical.

FourWeekMBA Business Toolbox

Business Engineering

Tech Business Model Template

A tech business model is made of four main components: value model (value propositions, mission, vision), technological model (R&D management), distribution model (sales and marketing organizational structure), and financial model (revenue modeling, cost structure, profitability and cash generation/management). Those elements coming together can serve as the basis to build a solid tech business model.

Web3 Business Model Template

A Blockchain Business Model according to the FourWeekMBA framework is made of four main components: Value Model (Core Philosophy, Core Values and Value Propositions for the key stakeholders), Blockchain Model (Protocol Rules, Network Shape and Applications Layer/Ecosystem), Distribution Model (the key channels amplifying the protocol and its communities), and the Economic Model (the dynamics/incentives through which protocol players make money). Those elements coming together can serve as the basis to build and analyze a solid Blockchain Business Model.

Asymmetric Business Models

In an asymmetric business model, the organization doesn’t monetize the user directly, but it leverages the data users provide coupled with technology, thus have a key customer pay to sustain the core asset. For example, Google makes money by leveraging users’ data, combined with its algorithms sold to advertisers for visibility.

Business Competition

In a business world driven by technology and digitalization, competition is much more fluid, as innovation becomes a bottom-up approach that can come from anywhere. Thus, making it much harder to define the boundaries of existing markets. Therefore, a proper business competition analysis looks at customer, technology, distribution, and financial model overlaps. While at the same time looking at future potential intersections among industries that in the short-term seem unrelated.

Technological Modeling

Technological modeling is a discipline to provide the basis for companies to sustain innovation, thus developing incremental products. While also looking at breakthrough innovative products that can pave the way for long-term success. In a sort of Barbell Strategy, technological modeling suggests having a two-sided approach, on the one hand, to keep sustaining continuous innovation as a core part of the business model. On the other hand, it places bets on future developments that have the potential to break through and take a leap forward.

Transitional Business Models

Minimum Viable Audience

Business Scaling

Business scaling is the process of transformation of a business as the product is validated by wider and wider market segments. Business scaling is about creating traction for a product that fits a small market segment. As the product is validated it becomes critical to build a viable business model. And as the product is offered at wider and wider market segments, it’s important to align product, business model, and organizational design, to enable wider and wider scale.

Market Expansion Theory

The market expansion consists in providing a product or service to a broader portion of an existing market or perhaps expanding that market. Or yet, market expansions can be about creating a whole new market. At each step, as a result, a company scales together with the market covered.

Speed-Reversibility

Asymmetric Betting

Growth Matrix

In the FourWeekMBA growth matrix, you can apply growth for existing customers by tackling the same problems (gain mode). Or by tackling existing problems, for new customers (expand mode). Or by tackling new problems for existing customers (extend mode). Or perhaps by tackling whole new problems for new customers (reinvent mode).

Revenue Streams Matrix

In the FourWeekMBA Revenue Streams Matrix, revenue streams are classified according to the kind of interactions the business has with its key customers. The first dimension is the “Frequency” of interaction with the key customer. As the second dimension, there is the “Ownership” of the interaction with the key customer.

Revenue model patterns are a way for companies to monetize their business models. A revenue model pattern is a crucial building block of a business model because it informs how the company will generate short-term financial resources to invest back into the business. Thus, the way a company makes money will also influence its overall business model.

Pricing Strategies

A pricing strategy or model helps companies find the pricing formula in fit with their business models. Thus aligning the customer needs with the product type while trying to enable profitability for the company. A good pricing strategy aligns the customer with the company’s long term financial sustainability to build a solid business model.

Other business resources:

What Is Business Model Innovation
What Is a Business Model
What Is Business Strategy
What is Blitzscaling
What Is Market Segmentation
What Is a Marketing Strategy
What is Growth Hacking

More Resources

About The Author

Gennaro Cuofano

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Business Models

27 Case Study Examples Every Marketer Should See

Published: September 05, 2024

Putting together a compelling case study is one of the most powerful strategies for showcasing your product and attracting future customers. But it's not easy to create case studies that your audience can’t wait to read.

In this post, I’ll go over the definition of a case study and the best examples to inspire you.

Table of Contents

What is a case study?

Marketing case study examples, digital marketing case study examples.

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A case study is a detailed story of something your company did. It includes a beginning — often discussing a challenge, an explanation of what happened next, and a resolution that explains how the company solved or improved on something.

A case study proves how your product has helped other companies by demonstrating real-life results. Not only that, but marketing case studies with solutions typically contain quotes from the customer.

This means that they’re not just ads where you praise your own product. Rather, other companies are praising your company — and there’s no stronger marketing material than a verbal recommendation or testimonial.

A great case study also has research and stats to back up points made about a project's results.

There are several ways to use case studies in your marketing strategy.

From featuring them on your website to including them in a sales presentation, a case study is a strong, persuasive tool that shows customers why they should work with you — straight from another customer.

Writing one from scratch is hard, though, which is why we’ve created a collection of case study templates for you to get started.

There’s no better way to generate more leads than by writing case studies . However, without case study examples from which to draw inspiration, it can be difficult to write impactful studies that convince visitors to submit a form.

To help you create an attractive and high-converting case study, we've put together a list of some of our favorites. This list includes famous case studies in marketing, technology, and business.

These studies can show you how to frame your company's offers in a way that is useful to your audience. So, look, and let these examples inspire your next brilliant case study design.

These marketing case studies with solutions show the value proposition of each product. They also show how each company benefited in both the short and long term using quantitative data.

In other words, you don’t get just nice statements, like “this company helped us a lot.” You see actual change within the firm through numbers and figures.

You can put your learnings into action with HubSpot's Free Case Study Templates . Available as custom designs and text-based documents, you can upload these templates to your CMS or send them to prospects as you see fit.

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How to Write a Case Study: Bookmarkable Guide & Template

7 Pieces of Content Your Audience Really Wants to See [New Data]

How to Market an Ebook: 21 Ways to Promote Your Content Offers

How to Write a Listicle [+ Examples and Ideas]

What Is a White Paper? [FAQs]

What is an Advertorial? 8 Examples to Help You Write One

How to Create Marketing Offers That Don't Fall Flat

20 Creative Ways To Repurpose Content

16 Important Ways to Use Case Studies in Your Marketing

11 Ways to Make Your Blog Post Interactive

Showcase your company's success using these free case study templates.

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15 Real-Life Case Study Examples & Best Practices

Written by: Oghale Olori

Case studies are more than just success stories.

They are powerful tools that demonstrate the practical value of your product or service. Case studies help attract attention to your products, build trust with potential customers and ultimately drive sales.

It’s no wonder that 73% of successful content marketers utilize case studies as part of their content strategy. Plus, buyers spend 54% of their time reviewing case studies before they make a buying decision.

To ensure you’re making the most of your case studies, we’ve put together 15 real-life case study examples to inspire you. These examples span a variety of industries and formats. We’ve also included best practices, design tips and templates to inspire you.

Let’s dive in!

What is a case study, 15 real-life case study examples, sales case study examples, saas case study examples, product case study examples, marketing case study examples, business case study examples, case study faqs.

A case study is a compelling narrative that showcases how your product or service has positively impacted a real business or individual.
Case studies delve into your customer's challenges, how your solution addressed them and the quantifiable results they achieved.
Your case study should have an attention-grabbing headline, great visuals and a relevant call to action. Other key elements include an introduction, problems and result section.
Visme provides easy-to-use tools, professionally designed templates and features for creating attractive and engaging case studies.

A case study is a real-life scenario where your company helped a person or business solve their unique challenges. It provides a detailed analysis of the positive outcomes achieved as a result of implementing your solution.

Case studies are an effective way to showcase the value of your product or service to potential customers without overt selling. By sharing how your company transformed a business, you can attract customers seeking similar solutions and results.

Case studies are not only about your company's capabilities; they are primarily about the benefits customers and clients have experienced from using your product.

Every great case study is made up of key elements. They are;

Attention-grabbing headline: Write a compelling headline that grabs attention and tells your reader what the case study is about. For example, "How a CRM System Helped a B2B Company Increase Revenue by 225%.
Introduction/Executive Summary: Include a brief overview of your case study, including your customer’s problem, the solution they implemented and the results they achieved.
Problem/Challenge: Case studies with solutions offer a powerful way to connect with potential customers. In this section, explain how your product or service specifically addressed your customer's challenges.
Solution: Explain how your product or service specifically addressed your customer's challenges.
Results/Achievements : Give a detailed account of the positive impact of your product. Quantify the benefits achieved using metrics such as increased sales, improved efficiency, reduced costs or enhanced customer satisfaction.
Graphics/Visuals: Include professional designs, high-quality photos and videos to make your case study more engaging and visually appealing.
Quotes/Testimonials: Incorporate written or video quotes from your clients to boost your credibility.
Relevant CTA: Insert a call to action (CTA) that encourages the reader to take action. For example, visiting your website or contacting you for more information. Your CTA can be a link to a landing page, a contact form or your social media handle and should be related to the product or service you highlighted in your case study.

Now that you understand what a case study is, let’s look at real-life case study examples. Among these, you'll find some simple case study examples that break down complex ideas into easily understandable solutions.

In this section, we’ll explore SaaS, marketing, sales, product and business case study examples with solutions. Take note of how these companies structured their case studies and included the key elements.

We’ve also included professionally designed case study templates to inspire you.

1. Georgia Tech Athletics Increase Season Ticket Sales by 80%

Georgia Tech Athletics, with its 8,000 football season ticket holders, sought for a way to increase efficiency and customer engagement.

Their initial sales process involved making multiple outbound phone calls per day with no real targeting or guidelines. Georgia Tech believed that targeting communications will enable them to reach more people in real time.

Salesloft improved Georgia Tech’s sales process with an inbound structure. This enabled sales reps to connect with their customers on a more targeted level. The use of dynamic fields and filters when importing lists ensured prospects received the right information, while communication with existing fans became faster with automation.

As a result, Georgia Tech Athletics recorded an 80% increase in season ticket sales as relationships with season ticket holders significantly improved. Employee engagement increased as employees became more energized to connect and communicate with fans.

Why Does This Case Study Work?

In this case study example , Salesloft utilized the key elements of a good case study. Their introduction gave an overview of their customers' challenges and the results they enjoyed after using them. After which they categorized the case study into three main sections: challenge, solution and result.

Salesloft utilized a case study video to increase engagement and invoke human connection.

Incorporating videos in your case study has a lot of benefits. Wyzol’s 2023 state of video marketing report showed a direct correlation between videos and an 87% increase in sales.

The beautiful thing is that creating videos for your case study doesn’t have to be daunting.

With an easy-to-use platform like Visme, you can create top-notch testimonial videos that will connect with your audience. Within the Visme editor, you can access over 1 million stock photos , video templates, animated graphics and more. These tools and resources will significantly improve the design and engagement of your case study.

Simplify content creation and brand management for your team

Collaborate on designs , mockups and wireframes with your non-design colleagues
Lock down your branding to maintain brand consistency throughout your designs
Why start from scratch? Save time with 1000s of professional branded templates

2. WeightWatchers Completely Revamped their Enterprise Sales Process with HubSpot

WeightWatchers, a 60-year-old wellness company, sought a CRM solution that increased the efficiency of their sales process. With their previous system, Weightwatchers had limited automation. They would copy-paste message templates from word documents or recreate one email for a batch of customers.

This required a huge effort from sales reps, account managers and leadership, as they were unable to track leads or pull customized reports for planning and growth.

WeightWatchers transformed their B2B sales strategy by leveraging HubSpot's robust marketing and sales workflows. They utilized HubSpot’s deal pipeline and automation features to streamline lead qualification. And the customized dashboard gave leadership valuable insights.

As a result, WeightWatchers generated seven figures in annual contract value and boosted recurring revenue. Hubspot’s impact resulted in 100% adoption across all sales, marketing, client success and operations teams.

Hubspot structured its case study into separate sections, demonstrating the specific benefits of their products to various aspects of the customer's business. Additionally, they integrated direct customer quotes in each section to boost credibility, resulting in a more compelling case study.

Getting insight from your customer about their challenges is one thing. But writing about their process and achievements in a concise and relatable way is another. If you find yourself constantly experiencing writer’s block, Visme’s AI writer is perfect for you.

Visme created this AI text generator tool to take your ideas and transform them into a great draft. So whether you need help writing your first draft or editing your final case study, Visme is ready for you.

3. Immi’s Ram Fam Helps to Drive Over $200k in Sales

Immi embarked on a mission to recreate healthier ramen recipes that were nutritious and delicious. After 2 years of tireless trials, Immi finally found the perfect ramen recipe. However, they envisioned a community of passionate ramen enthusiasts to fuel their business growth.

This vision propelled them to partner with Shopify Collabs. Shopify Collabs successfully cultivated and managed Immi’s Ramen community of ambassadors and creators.

As a result of their partnership, Immi’s community grew to more than 400 dedicated members, generating over $200,000 in total affiliate sales.

The power of data-driven headlines cannot be overemphasized. Chili Piper strategically incorporates quantifiable results in their headlines. This instantly sparks curiosity and interest in readers.

While not every customer success story may boast headline-grabbing figures, quantifying achievements in percentages is still effective. For example, you can highlight a 50% revenue increase with the implementation of your product.

Take a look at the beautiful case study template below. Just like in the example above, the figures in the headline instantly grab attention and entice your reader to click through.

Having a case study document is a key factor in boosting engagement. This makes it easy to promote your case study in multiple ways. With Visme, you can easily publish, download and share your case study with your customers in a variety of formats, including PDF, PPTX, JPG and more!

4. How WOW! is Saving Nearly 79% in Time and Cost With Visme

This case study discusses how Visme helped WOW! save time and money by providing user-friendly tools to create interactive and quality training materials for their employees. Find out what your team can do with Visme. Request a Demo

WOW!'s learning and development team creates high-quality training materials for new and existing employees. Previous tools and platforms they used had plain templates, little to no interactivity features, and limited flexibility—that is, until they discovered Visme.

Now, the learning and development team at WOW! use Visme to create engaging infographics, training videos, slide decks and other training materials.

This has directly reduced the company's turnover rate, saving them money spent on recruiting and training new employees. It has also saved them a significant amount of time, which they can now allocate to other important tasks.

Visme's customer testimonials spark an emotional connection with the reader, leaving a profound impact. Upon reading this case study, prospective customers will be blown away by the remarkable efficiency achieved by Visme's clients after switching from PowerPoint.

Visme’s interactivity feature was a game changer for WOW! and one of the primary reasons they chose Visme.

“Previously we were using PowerPoint, which is fine, but the interactivity you can get with Visme is so much more robust that we’ve all steered away from PowerPoint.” - Kendra, L&D team, Wow!

Visme’s interactive feature allowed them to animate their infographics, include clickable links on their PowerPoint designs and even embed polls and quizzes their employees could interact with.

By embedding the slide decks, infographics and other training materials WOW! created with Visme, potential customers get a taste of what they can create with the tool. This is much more effective than describing the features of Visme because it allows potential customers to see the tool in action.

To top it all off, this case study utilized relevant data and figures. For example, one part of the case study said, “In Visme, where Kendra’s team has access to hundreds of templates, a brand kit, and millions of design assets at their disposal, their team can create presentations in 80% less time.”

Who wouldn't want that?

Including relevant figures and graphics in your case study is a sure way to convince your potential customers why you’re a great fit for their brand. The case study template below is a great example of integrating relevant figures and data.

This colorful template begins with a captivating headline. But that is not the best part; this template extensively showcases the results their customer had using relevant figures.

The arrangement of the results makes it fun and attractive. Instead of just putting figures in a plain table, you can find interesting shapes in your Visme editor to take your case study to the next level.

5. Lyte Reduces Customer Churn To Just 3% With Hubspot CRM

While Lyte was redefining the ticketing industry, it had no definite CRM system . Lyte utilized 12–15 different SaaS solutions across various departments, which led to a lack of alignment between teams, duplication of work and overlapping tasks.

Customer data was spread across these platforms, making it difficult to effectively track their customer journey. As a result, their churn rate increased along with customer dissatisfaction.

Through Fuelius , Lyte founded and implemented Hubspot CRM. Lyte's productivity skyrocketed after incorporating Hubspot's all-in-one CRM tool. With improved efficiency, better teamwork and stronger client relationships, sales figures soared.

The case study title page and executive summary act as compelling entry points for both existing and potential customers. This overview provides a clear understanding of the case study and also strategically incorporates key details like the client's industry, location and relevant background information.

Having a good summary of your case study can prompt your readers to engage further. You can achieve this with a simple but effective case study one-pager that highlights your customer’s problems, process and achievements, just like this case study did in the beginning.

Moreover, you can easily distribute your case study one-pager and use it as a lead magnet to draw prospective customers to your company.

Take a look at this case study one-pager template below.

This template includes key aspects of your case study, such as the introduction, key findings, conclusion and more, without overcrowding the page. The use of multiple shades of blue gives it a clean and dynamic layout.

Our favorite part of this template is where the age group is visualized.

With Visme’s data visualization tool , you can present your data in tables, graphs, progress bars, maps and so much more. All you need to do is choose your preferred data visualization widget, input or import your data and click enter!

6. How Workato Converts 75% of Their Qualified Leads

Workato wanted to improve their inbound leads and increase their conversion rate, which ranged from 40-55%.

At first, Workato searched for a simple scheduling tool. They soon discovered that they needed a tool that provided advanced routing capabilities based on zip code and other criteria. Luckily, they found and implemented Chili Piper.

As a result of implementing Chili Piper, Workato achieved a remarkable 75–80% conversion rate and improved show rates. This led to a substantial revenue boost, with a 10-15% increase in revenue attributed to Chili Piper's impact on lead conversion.

This case study example utilizes the power of video testimonials to drive the impact of their product.

Chili Piper incorporates screenshots and clips of their tool in use. This is a great strategy because it helps your viewers become familiar with how your product works, making onboarding new customers much easier.

In this case study example, we see the importance of efficient Workflow Management Systems (WMS). Without a WMS, you manually assign tasks to your team members and engage in multiple emails for regular updates on progress.

However, when crafting and designing your case study, you should prioritize having a good WMS.

Visme has an outstanding Workflow Management System feature that keeps you on top of all your projects and designs. This feature makes it much easier to assign roles, ensure accuracy across documents, and track progress and deadlines.

Visme’s WMS feature allows you to limit access to your entire document by assigning specific slides or pages to individual members of your team. At the end of the day, your team members are not overwhelmed or distracted by the whole document but can focus on their tasks.

7. Rush Order Helps Vogmask Scale-Up During a Pandemic

Vomask's reliance on third-party fulfillment companies became a challenge as demand for their masks grew. Seeking a reliable fulfillment partner, they found Rush Order and entrusted them with their entire inventory.

Vomask's partnership with Rush Order proved to be a lifesaver during the COVID-19 pandemic. Rush Order's agility, efficiency and commitment to customer satisfaction helped Vogmask navigate the unprecedented demand and maintain its reputation for quality and service.

Rush Order’s comprehensive support enabled Vogmask to scale up its order processing by a staggering 900% while maintaining a remarkable customer satisfaction rate of 92%.

Rush Order chose one event where their impact mattered the most to their customer and shared that story.

While pandemics don't happen every day, you can look through your customer’s journey and highlight a specific time or scenario where your product or service saved their business.

The story of Vogmask and Rush Order is compelling, but it simply is not enough. The case study format and design attract readers' attention and make them want to know more. Rush Order uses consistent colors throughout the case study, starting with the logo, bold square blocks, pictures, and even headers.

Take a look at this product case study template below.

Just like our example, this case study template utilizes bold colors and large squares to attract and maintain the reader’s attention. It provides enough room for you to write about your customers' backgrounds/introductions, challenges, goals and results.

The right combination of shapes and colors adds a level of professionalism to this case study template.

Fuji Xerox Australia Business Equipment Case Study

8. AMR Hair & Beauty leverages B2B functionality to boost sales by 200%

With limits on website customization, slow page loading and multiple website crashes during peak events, it wasn't long before AMR Hair & Beauty began looking for a new e-commerce solution.

Their existing platform lacked effective search and filtering options, a seamless checkout process and the data analytics capabilities needed for informed decision-making. This led to a significant number of abandoned carts.

Upon switching to Shopify Plus, AMR immediately saw improvements in page loading speed and average session duration. They added better search and filtering options for their wholesale customers and customized their checkout process.

Due to this, AMR witnessed a 200% increase in sales and a 77% rise in B2B average order value. AMR Hair & Beauty is now poised for further expansion and growth.

This case study example showcases the power of a concise and impactful narrative.

To make their case analysis more effective, Shopify focused on the most relevant aspects of the customer's journey. While there may have been other challenges the customer faced, they only included those that directly related to their solutions.

Take a look at this case study template below. It is perfect if you want to create a concise but effective case study. Without including unnecessary details, you can outline the challenges, solutions and results your customers experienced from using your product.

Don’t forget to include a strong CTA within your case study. By incorporating a link, sidebar pop-up or an exit pop-up into your case study, you can prompt your readers and prospective clients to connect with you.

9. How a Marketing Agency Uses Visme to Create Engaging Content With Infographics

SmartBox Dental , a marketing agency specializing in dental practices, sought ways to make dental advice more interesting and easier to read. However, they lacked the design skills to do so effectively.

Visme's wide range of templates and features made it easy for the team to create high-quality content quickly and efficiently. SmartBox Dental enjoyed creating infographics in as little as 10-15 minutes, compared to one hour before Visme was implemented.

By leveraging Visme, SmartBox Dental successfully transformed dental content into a more enjoyable and informative experience for their clients' patients. Therefore enhancing its reputation as a marketing partner that goes the extra mile to deliver value to its clients.

Visme creatively incorporates testimonials In this case study example.

By showcasing infographics and designs created by their clients, they leverage the power of social proof in a visually compelling way. This way, potential customers gain immediate insight into the creative possibilities Visme offers as a design tool.

This example effectively showcases a product's versatility and impact, and we can learn a lot about writing a case study from it. Instead of focusing on one tool or feature per customer, Visme took a more comprehensive approach.

Within each section of their case study, Visme explained how a particular tool or feature played a key role in solving the customer's challenges.

For example, this case study highlighted Visme’s collaboration tool . With Visme’s tool, the SmartBox Dental content team fostered teamwork, accountability and effective supervision.

Visme also achieved a versatile case study by including relevant quotes to showcase each tool or feature. Take a look at some examples;

Visme’s collaboration tool: “We really like the collaboration tool. Being able to see what a co-worker is working on and borrow their ideas or collaborate on a project to make sure we get the best end result really helps us out.”

Visme’s library of stock photos and animated characters: “I really love the images and the look those give to an infographic. I also really like the animated little guys and the animated pictures. That’s added a lot of fun to our designs.”

Visme’s interactivity feature: “You can add URLs and phone number links directly into the infographic so they can just click and call or go to another page on the website and I really like adding those hyperlinks in.”

You can ask your customers to talk about the different products or features that helped them achieve their business success and draw quotes from each one.

10. Jasper Grows Blog Organic Sessions 810% and Blog-Attributed User Signups 400X

Jasper, an AI writing tool, lacked a scalable content strategy to drive organic traffic and user growth. They needed help creating content that converted visitors into users. Especially when a looming domain migration threatened organic traffic.

To address these challenges, Jasper partnered with Omniscient Digital. Their goal was to turn their content into a growth channel and drive organic growth. Omniscient Digital developed a full content strategy for Jasper AI, which included a content audit, competitive analysis, and keyword discovery.

Through their collaboration, Jasper’s organic blog sessions increased by 810%, despite the domain migration. They also witnessed a 400X increase in blog-attributed signups. And more importantly, the content program contributed to over $4 million in annual recurring revenue.

The combination of storytelling and video testimonials within the case study example makes this a real winner. But there’s a twist to it. Omniscient segmented the video testimonials and placed them in different sections of the case study.

Video marketing , especially in case studies, works wonders. Research shows us that 42% of people prefer video testimonials because they show real customers with real success stories. So if you haven't thought of it before, incorporate video testimonials into your case study.

Take a look at this stunning video testimonial template. With its simple design, you can input the picture, name and quote of your customer within your case study in a fun and engaging way.

Try it yourself! Customize this template with your customer’s testimonial and add it to your case study!

11. How Meliá Became One of the Most Influential Hotel Chains on Social Media

Meliá Hotels needed help managing their growing social media customer service needs. Despite having over 500 social accounts, they lacked a unified response protocol and detailed reporting. This largely hindered efficiency and brand consistency.

Meliá partnered with Hootsuite to build an in-house social customer care team. Implementing Hootsuite's tools enabled Meliá to decrease response times from 24 hours to 12.4 hours while also leveraging smart automation.

In addition to that, Meliá resolved over 133,000 conversations, booking 330 inquiries per week through Hootsuite Inbox. They significantly improved brand consistency, response time and customer satisfaction.

The need for a good case study design cannot be over-emphasized.

As soon as anyone lands on this case study example, they are mesmerized by a beautiful case study design. This alone raises the interest of readers and keeps them engaged till the end.

If you’re currently saying to yourself, “ I can write great case studies, but I don’t have the time or skill to turn it into a beautiful document.” Say no more.

Visme’s amazing AI document generator can take your text and transform it into a stunning and professional document in minutes! Not only do you save time, but you also get inspired by the design.

With Visme’s document generator, you can create PDFs, case study presentations , infographics and more!

Take a look at this case study template below. Just like our case study example, it captures readers' attention with its beautiful design. Its dynamic blend of colors and fonts helps to segment each element of the case study beautifully.

12. Tea’s Me Cafe: Tamika Catchings is Brewing Glory

Tamika's journey began when she purchased Tea's Me Cafe in 2017, saving it from closure. She recognized the potential of the cafe as a community hub and hosted regular events centered on social issues and youth empowerment.

One of Tamika’s business goals was to automate her business. She sought to streamline business processes across various aspects of her business. One of the ways she achieves this goal is through Constant Contact.

Constant Contact became an integral part of Tamika's marketing strategy. They provided an automated and centralized platform for managing email newsletters, event registrations, social media scheduling and more.

This allowed Tamika and her team to collaborate efficiently and focus on engaging with their audience. They effectively utilized features like WooCommerce integration, text-to-join and the survey builder to grow their email list, segment their audience and gather valuable feedback.

The case study example utilizes the power of storytelling to form a connection with readers. Constant Contact takes a humble approach in this case study. They spotlight their customers' efforts as the reason for their achievements and growth, establishing trust and credibility.

This case study is also visually appealing, filled with high-quality photos of their customer. While this is a great way to foster originality, it can prove challenging if your customer sends you blurry or low-quality photos.

If you find yourself in that dilemma, you can use Visme’s AI image edit tool to touch up your photos. With Visme’s AI tool, you can remove unwanted backgrounds, erase unwanted objects, unblur low-quality pictures and upscale any photo without losing the quality.

Constant Contact offers its readers various formats to engage with their case study. Including an audio podcast and PDF.

In its PDF version, Constant Contact utilized its brand colors to create a stunning case study design. With this, they increase brand awareness and, in turn, brand recognition with anyone who comes across their case study.

With Visme’s brand wizard tool , you can seamlessly incorporate your brand assets into any design or document you create. By inputting your URL, Visme’s AI integration will take note of your brand colors, brand fonts and more and create branded templates for you automatically.

You don't need to worry about spending hours customizing templates to fit your brand anymore. You can focus on writing amazing case studies that promote your company.

13. How Breakwater Kitchens Achieved a 7% Growth in Sales With Thryv

Breakwater Kitchens struggled with managing their business operations efficiently. They spent a lot of time on manual tasks, such as scheduling appointments and managing client communication. This made it difficult for them to grow their business and provide the best possible service to their customers.

David, the owner, discovered Thryv. With Thryv, Breakwater Kitchens was able to automate many of their manual tasks. Additionally, Thryv integrated social media management. This enabled Breakwater Kitchens to deliver a consistent brand message, captivate its audience and foster online growth.

As a result, Breakwater Kitchens achieved increased efficiency, reduced missed appointments and a 7% growth in sales.

This case study example uses a concise format and strong verbs, which make it easy for readers to absorb the information.

At the top of the case study, Thryv immediately builds trust by presenting their customer's complete profile, including their name, company details and website. This allows potential customers to verify the case study's legitimacy, making them more likely to believe in Thryv's services.

However, manually copying and pasting customer information across multiple pages of your case study can be time-consuming.

To save time and effort, you can utilize Visme's dynamic field feature . Dynamic fields automatically insert reusable information into your designs. So you don’t have to type it out multiple times.

14. Zoom’s Creative Team Saves Over 4,000 Hours With Brandfolder

Zoom experienced rapid growth with the advent of remote work and the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic. Such growth called for agility and resilience to scale through.

At the time, Zoom’s assets were disorganized which made retrieving brand information a burden. Zoom’s creative manager spent no less than 10 hours per week finding and retrieving brand assets for internal teams.

Zoom needed a more sustainable approach to organizing and retrieving brand information and came across Brandfolder. Brandfolder simplified and accelerated Zoom’s email localization and webpage development. It also enhanced the creation and storage of Zoom virtual backgrounds.

With Brandfolder, Zoom now saves 4,000+ hours every year. The company also centralized its assets in Brandfolder, which allowed 6,800+ employees and 20-30 vendors to quickly access them.

Brandfolder infused its case study with compelling data and backed it up with verifiable sources. This data-driven approach boosts credibility and increases the impact of their story.

Bradfolder's case study goes the extra mile by providing a downloadable PDF version, making it convenient for readers to access the information on their own time. Their dedication to crafting stunning visuals is evident in every aspect of the project.

From the vibrant colors to the seamless navigation, everything has been meticulously designed to leave a lasting impression on the viewer. And with clickable links that make exploring the content a breeze, the user experience is guaranteed to be nothing short of exceptional.

The thing is, your case study presentation won’t always sit on your website. There are instances where you may need to do a case study presentation for clients, partners or potential investors.

Visme has a rich library of templates you can tap into. But if you’re racing against the clock, Visme’s AI presentation maker is your best ally.

15. How Cents of Style Made $1.7M+ in Affiliate Sales with LeadDyno

Cents of Style had a successful affiliate and influencer marketing strategy. However, their existing affiliate marketing platform was not intuitive, customizable or transparent enough to meet the needs of their influencers.

Cents of Styles needed an easy-to-use affiliate marketing platform that gave them more freedom to customize their program and implement a multi-tier commission program.

After exploring their options, Cents of Style decided on LeadDyno.

LeadDyno provided more flexibility, allowing them to customize commission rates and implement their multi-tier commission structure, switching from monthly to weekly payouts.

Also, integrations with PayPal made payments smoother And features like newsletters and leaderboards added to the platform's success by keeping things transparent and engaging.

As a result, Cents of Style witnessed an impressive $1.7 million in revenue from affiliate sales with a substantial increase in web sales by 80%.

LeadDyno strategically placed a compelling CTA in the middle of their case study layout, maximizing its impact. At this point, readers are already invested in the customer's story and may be considering implementing similar strategies.

A well-placed CTA offers them a direct path to learn more and take action.

LeadDyno also utilized the power of quotes to strengthen their case study. They didn't just embed these quotes seamlessly into the text; instead, they emphasized each one with distinct blocks.

Are you looking for an easier and quicker solution to create a case study and other business documents? Try Visme's AI designer ! This powerful tool allows you to generate complete documents, such as case studies, reports, whitepapers and more, just by providing text prompts. Simply explain your requirements to the tool, and it will produce the document for you, complete with text, images, design assets and more.

Still have more questions about case studies? Let's look at some frequently asked questions.

How to Write a Case Study?

Choose a compelling story: Not all case studies are created equal. Pick one that is relevant to your target audience and demonstrates the specific benefits of your product or service.
Outline your case study: Create a case study outline and highlight how you will structure your case study to include the introduction, problem, solution and achievements of your customer.
Choose a case study template: After you outline your case study, choose a case study template . Visme has stunning templates that can inspire your case study design.
Craft a compelling headline: Include figures or percentages that draw attention to your case study.
Work on the first draft: Your case study should be easy to read and understand. Use clear and concise language and avoid jargon.
Include high-quality visual aids: Visuals can help to make your case study more engaging and easier to read. Consider adding high-quality photos, screenshots or videos.
Include a relevant CTA: Tell prospective customers how to reach you for questions or sign-ups.

What Are the Stages of a Case Study?

The stages of a case study are;

Planning & Preparation: Highlight your goals for writing the case study. Plan the case study format, length and audience you wish to target.
Interview the Client: Reach out to the company you want to showcase and ask relevant questions about their journey and achievements.
Revision & Editing: Review your case study and ask for feedback. Include relevant quotes and CTAs to your case study.
Publication & Distribution: Publish and share your case study on your website, social media channels and email list!
Marketing & Repurposing: Turn your case study into a podcast, PDF, case study presentation and more. Share these materials with your sales and marketing team.

What Are the Advantages and Disadvantages of a Case Study?

Advantages of a case study:

Case studies showcase a specific solution and outcome for specific customer challenges.
It attracts potential customers with similar challenges.
It builds trust and credibility with potential customers.
It provides an in-depth analysis of your company’s problem-solving process.

Disadvantages of a case study:

Limited applicability. Case studies are tailored to specific cases and may not apply to other businesses.
It relies heavily on customer cooperation and willingness to share information.
It stands a risk of becoming outdated as industries and customer needs evolve.

What Are the Types of Case Studies?

There are 7 main types of case studies. They include;

Illustrative case study.
Instrumental case study.
Intrinsic case study.
Descriptive case study.
Explanatory case study.
Exploratory case study.
Collective case study.

How Long Should a Case Study Be?

The ideal length of your case study is between 500 - 1500 words or 1-3 pages. Certain factors like your target audience, goal or the amount of detail you want to share may influence the length of your case study. This infographic has powerful tips for designing winning case studies

What Is the Difference Between a Case Study and an Example?

Case studies provide a detailed narrative of how your product or service was used to solve a problem. Examples are general illustrations and are not necessarily real-life scenarios.

Case studies are often used for marketing purposes, attracting potential customers and building trust. Examples, on the other hand, are primarily used to simplify or clarify complex concepts.

Where Can I Find Case Study Examples?

You can easily find many case study examples online and in industry publications. Many companies, including Visme, share case studies on their websites to showcase how their products or services have helped clients achieve success. You can also search online libraries and professional organizations for case studies related to your specific industry or field.

If you need professionally-designed, customizable case study templates to create your own, Visme's template library is one of the best places to look. These templates include all the essential sections of a case study and high-quality content to help you create case studies that position your business as an industry leader.

Get More Out Of Your Case Studies With Visme

Case studies are an essential tool for converting potential customers into paying customers. By following the tips in this article, you can create compelling case studies that will help you build trust, establish credibility and drive sales.

Visme can help you create stunning case studies and other relevant marketing materials. With our easy-to-use platform, interactive features and analytics tools , you can increase your content creation game in no time.

There is no limit to what you can achieve with Visme. Connect with Sales to discover how Visme can boost your business goals.

Easily create beautiful case studies and more with Visme

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5 Benefits of Learning Through the Case Study Method

Harvard Business School MBA students learning through the case study method

28 Nov 2023

While several factors make HBS Online unique —including a global Community and real-world outcomes —active learning through the case study method rises to the top.

In a 2023 City Square Associates survey, 74 percent of HBS Online learners who also took a course from another provider said HBS Online’s case method and real-world examples were better by comparison.

Here’s a primer on the case method, five benefits you could gain, and how to experience it for yourself.

Access your free e-book today.

What Is the Harvard Business School Case Study Method?

The case study method , or case method , is a learning technique in which you’re presented with a real-world business challenge and asked how you’d solve it. After working through it yourself and with peers, you’re told how the scenario played out.

HBS pioneered the case method in 1922. Shortly before, in 1921, the first case was written.

“How do you go into an ambiguous situation and get to the bottom of it?” says HBS Professor Jan Rivkin, former senior associate dean and chair of HBS's master of business administration (MBA) program, in a video about the case method . “That skill—the skill of figuring out a course of inquiry to choose a course of action—that skill is as relevant today as it was in 1921.”

Originally developed for the in-person MBA classroom, HBS Online adapted the case method into an engaging, interactive online learning experience in 2014.

In HBS Online courses , you learn about each case from the business professional who experienced it. After reviewing their videos, you’re prompted to take their perspective and explain how you’d handle their situation.

You then get to read peers’ responses, “star” them, and comment to further the discussion. Afterward, you learn how the professional handled it and their key takeaways.

Learn more about HBS Online's approach to the case method in the video below, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more.

HBS Online’s adaptation of the case method incorporates the famed HBS “cold call,” in which you’re called on at random to make a decision without time to prepare.

“Learning came to life!” said Sheneka Balogun , chief administration officer and chief of staff at LeMoyne-Owen College, of her experience taking the Credential of Readiness (CORe) program . “The videos from the professors, the interactive cold calls where you were randomly selected to participate, and the case studies that enhanced and often captured the essence of objectives and learning goals were all embedded in each module. This made learning fun, engaging, and student-friendly.”

If you’re considering taking a course that leverages the case study method, here are five benefits you could experience.

5 Benefits of Learning Through Case Studies

1. take new perspectives.

The case method prompts you to consider a scenario from another person’s perspective. To work through the situation and come up with a solution, you must consider their circumstances, limitations, risk tolerance, stakeholders, resources, and potential consequences to assess how to respond.

Taking on new perspectives not only can help you navigate your own challenges but also others’. Putting yourself in someone else’s situation to understand their motivations and needs can go a long way when collaborating with stakeholders.

2. Hone Your Decision-Making Skills

Another skill you can build is the ability to make decisions effectively . The case study method forces you to use limited information to decide how to handle a problem—just like in the real world.

Throughout your career, you’ll need to make difficult decisions with incomplete or imperfect information—and sometimes, you won’t feel qualified to do so. Learning through the case method allows you to practice this skill in a low-stakes environment. When facing a real challenge, you’ll be better prepared to think quickly, collaborate with others, and present and defend your solution.

3. Become More Open-Minded

As you collaborate with peers on responses, it becomes clear that not everyone solves problems the same way. Exposing yourself to various approaches and perspectives can help you become a more open-minded professional.

When you’re part of a diverse group of learners from around the world, your experiences, cultures, and backgrounds contribute to a range of opinions on each case.

On the HBS Online course platform, you’re prompted to view and comment on others’ responses, and discussion is encouraged. This practice of considering others’ perspectives can make you more receptive in your career.

“You’d be surprised at how much you can learn from your peers,” said Ratnaditya Jonnalagadda , a software engineer who took CORe.

In addition to interacting with peers in the course platform, Jonnalagadda was part of the HBS Online Community , where he networked with other professionals and continued discussions sparked by course content.

“You get to understand your peers better, and students share examples of businesses implementing a concept from a module you just learned,” Jonnalagadda said. “It’s a very good way to cement the concepts in one's mind.”

4. Enhance Your Curiosity

One byproduct of taking on different perspectives is that it enables you to picture yourself in various roles, industries, and business functions.

“Each case offers an opportunity for students to see what resonates with them, what excites them, what bores them, which role they could imagine inhabiting in their careers,” says former HBS Dean Nitin Nohria in the Harvard Business Review . “Cases stimulate curiosity about the range of opportunities in the world and the many ways that students can make a difference as leaders.”

Through the case method, you can “try on” roles you may not have considered and feel more prepared to change or advance your career .

5. Build Your Self-Confidence

Finally, learning through the case study method can build your confidence. Each time you assume a business leader’s perspective, aim to solve a new challenge, and express and defend your opinions and decisions to peers, you prepare to do the same in your career.

According to a 2022 City Square Associates survey , 84 percent of HBS Online learners report feeling more confident making business decisions after taking a course.

“Self-confidence is difficult to teach or coach, but the case study method seems to instill it in people,” Nohria says in the Harvard Business Review . “There may well be other ways of learning these meta-skills, such as the repeated experience gained through practice or guidance from a gifted coach. However, under the direction of a masterful teacher, the case method can engage students and help them develop powerful meta-skills like no other form of teaching.”

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How to Experience the Case Study Method

If the case method seems like a good fit for your learning style, experience it for yourself by taking an HBS Online course. Offerings span eight subject areas, including:

Business essentials
Leadership and management
Entrepreneurship and innovation
Digital transformation
Finance and accounting
Business in society

No matter which course or credential program you choose, you’ll examine case studies from real business professionals, work through their challenges alongside peers, and gain valuable insights to apply to your career.

Are you interested in discovering how HBS Online can help advance your career? Explore our course catalog and download our free guide —complete with interactive workbook sections—to determine if online learning is right for you and which course to take.

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How to Define Your Case Study Strategy (And Why You Need One)

Unfortunately, few companies have a defined customer case study strategy in place.

Often, they’ll just identify a good customer or project (“This would make a great case study!”) and then fly at it.

If they get that case study done, they may eventually turn to another good candidate and repeat the process.

And that’s as far as it goes.

But when you take this piecemeal approach, and overlook the strategy piece, you may run into the following problems:

You struggle to get customers to agree to participate in your case study
You get agreement but then struggle to find the right people to interview
You feel weird asking because the engagement is over and done with
You completed one (or maybe two) case studies but the rest have stalled
Your completed case studies focus on a solution or industry you’re trying to transition away from
All your case studies are over a year old
Your case studies are relegated to some sad part of your website.

You don’t want to plunge in without a plan.

Instead, start by developing a strategy to guide your efforts and keep the case study train going.

Developing Your Case Study Strategy

So how do you develop a case study strategy?

You start by asking these three questions BEFORE you get the customer on the phone:

Question #1: What is your goal?

Are you trying to promote a certain service? Drive a certain type of lead? Upsell part of your offering?

You need to know your main purpose before you start.

Question #2: Whom are you targeting?

Not all positions are the same. The pressures a CEO and CMO face are different than the pressures faced by someone in IT.

You need to know who you’re selling to because you want them to see themselves in the story.

After all, case studies are human stories . They’re not really about the company.

They’re about how you helped the people within the company succeed and reach their objectives.

Case studies are human stories. They’re not really about the company.

Question #3: how will you use them.

Will you relegate your case studies to the resources section of your website? (Hopefully not.)

Will you put them on your blog? Use them in outreach? Arm your sales team with them?

You need to know HOW you will use your case studies because that will influence the case study format and how you put them together.

Figure out the story you want to tell

Once you’ve asked yourself these questions, you can go deeper into figuring out the kind of stories you want to tell.

If you’re trying to promote a particular service , for example, you’ll want to speak with a customer who’s gone through the experience of implementing that service.

If you’re trying to promote a particular service within a particular industry , you’ll want to speak with a customer who’s implemented that service in that industry.

Or maybe you want to show leads that you solved a particular challenge within that industry with that service.

Or maybe you want to appeal to a particular role within that industry who implemented that particular service.

As you can see, you can define your “ideal” case study candidate by many factors, drilling down from service, to industry, to challenge, to role:

By considering all of these layers, you can figure out who on your client roster can give you the story you want.

Tip: Talk to your sales team

A possible shortcut in this kind of analysis is to talk to your sales team.

Salespeople need case studies like oxygen. They’re the most persuasive asset they have to close deals.

Customer success stories are the most persuasive asset your sales team has to close deals.

Your sales team will know the kinds of stories they need to share with leads and the most common problems and pushback.

So rather than huddling with your marketing team to develop your strategy , bring your sales team into the conversation.

The stories you tell will be the stories you attract

One last key point: The stories you tell will be the stories you attract.

If all of your case studies tell the story of how small accounting firms have used your software to grow, you will attract small accounting firms that want to use your software to grow.

Which is a problem if you want to attract bigger accounting firms, for example.

So think carefully about the stories you want to tell and plan accordingly.

Define your case study strategy BEFORE you start

It’s easy to overlook the strategy piece in your excitement to get started, but it’s super important.

Creating customer case studies isn’t easy. It takes time and resources to do well.

So when you do it, you want to make sure you’re doing it right.

Want our team to create those case studies for you—and help with the strategy piece?

Head of Writing and Interviewing

Based in Vancouver, Canada, Holly is pumped to tell stories of companies succeeding and doing good in the world.

Ya, you like that? Well, there’s more where that came from!

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Knowledge Base

Methodology

What Is a Case Study? | Definition, Examples & Methods

What Is a Case Study? | Definition, Examples & Methods

Published on May 8, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on November 20, 2023.

A case study is a detailed study of a specific subject, such as a person, group, place, event, organization, or phenomenon. Case studies are commonly used in social, educational, clinical, and business research.

A case study research design usually involves qualitative methods , but quantitative methods are sometimes also used. Case studies are good for describing , comparing, evaluating and understanding different aspects of a research problem .

When to do a case study, step 1: select a case, step 2: build a theoretical framework, step 3: collect your data, step 4: describe and analyze the case, other interesting articles.

A case study is an appropriate research design when you want to gain concrete, contextual, in-depth knowledge about a specific real-world subject. It allows you to explore the key characteristics, meanings, and implications of the case.

Case studies are often a good choice in a thesis or dissertation . They keep your project focused and manageable when you don’t have the time or resources to do large-scale research.

You might use just one complex case study where you explore a single subject in depth, or conduct multiple case studies to compare and illuminate different aspects of your research problem.

Case study examples
Research question	Case study
What are the ecological effects of wolf reintroduction?	Case study of wolf reintroduction in Yellowstone National Park
How do populist politicians use narratives about history to gain support?	Case studies of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and US president Donald Trump
How can teachers implement active learning strategies in mixed-level classrooms?	Case study of a local school that promotes active learning
What are the main advantages and disadvantages of wind farms for rural communities?	Case studies of three rural wind farm development projects in different parts of the country
How are viral marketing strategies changing the relationship between companies and consumers?	Case study of the iPhone X marketing campaign
How do experiences of work in the gig economy differ by gender, race and age?	Case studies of Deliveroo and Uber drivers in London

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

Once you have developed your problem statement and research questions , you should be ready to choose the specific case that you want to focus on. A good case study should have the potential to:

Provide new or unexpected insights into the subject
Challenge or complicate existing assumptions and theories
Propose practical courses of action to resolve a problem
Open up new directions for future research

TipIf your research is more practical in nature and aims to simultaneously investigate an issue as you solve it, consider conducting action research instead.

Unlike quantitative or experimental research , a strong case study does not require a random or representative sample. In fact, case studies often deliberately focus on unusual, neglected, or outlying cases which may shed new light on the research problem.

Example of an outlying case studyIn the 1960s the town of Roseto, Pennsylvania was discovered to have extremely low rates of heart disease compared to the US average. It became an important case study for understanding previously neglected causes of heart disease.

However, you can also choose a more common or representative case to exemplify a particular category, experience or phenomenon.

Example of a representative case studyIn the 1920s, two sociologists used Muncie, Indiana as a case study of a typical American city that supposedly exemplified the changing culture of the US at the time.

While case studies focus more on concrete details than general theories, they should usually have some connection with theory in the field. This way the case study is not just an isolated description, but is integrated into existing knowledge about the topic. It might aim to:

Exemplify a theory by showing how it explains the case under investigation
Expand on a theory by uncovering new concepts and ideas that need to be incorporated
Challenge a theory by exploring an outlier case that doesn’t fit with established assumptions

To ensure that your analysis of the case has a solid academic grounding, you should conduct a literature review of sources related to the topic and develop a theoretical framework . This means identifying key concepts and theories to guide your analysis and interpretation.

There are many different research methods you can use to collect data on your subject. Case studies tend to focus on qualitative data using methods such as interviews , observations , and analysis of primary and secondary sources (e.g., newspaper articles, photographs, official records). Sometimes a case study will also collect quantitative data.

Example of a mixed methods case studyFor a case study of a wind farm development in a rural area, you could collect quantitative data on employment rates and business revenue, collect qualitative data on local people’s perceptions and experiences, and analyze local and national media coverage of the development.

The aim is to gain as thorough an understanding as possible of the case and its context.

In writing up the case study, you need to bring together all the relevant aspects to give as complete a picture as possible of the subject.

How you report your findings depends on the type of research you are doing. Some case studies are structured like a standard scientific paper or thesis , with separate sections or chapters for the methods , results and discussion .

Others are written in a more narrative style, aiming to explore the case from various angles and analyze its meanings and implications (for example, by using textual analysis or discourse analysis ).

In all cases, though, make sure to give contextual details about the case, connect it back to the literature and theory, and discuss how it fits into wider patterns or debates.

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

Normal distribution
Degrees of freedom
Null hypothesis
Discourse analysis
Control groups
Mixed methods research
Non-probability sampling
Quantitative research
Ecological validity

Research bias

Rosenthal effect
Implicit bias
Cognitive bias
Selection bias
Negativity bias
Status quo bias

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More From Forbes

Creating an effective case study: 12 important tips to remember.

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The practical application of a theory or idea is the most effective way of demonstrating its usefulness. Case studies allow for the dissection of practical applications to uncover the thinking that led to them.

The best thing about case studies is that they can be used as a learning tool for both successful concepts as well as failed ones, while also serving as a valuable business card when approaching new customers. Developing a case study, however, requires delving into the background of a project and uncovering what made it good or bad. In addition, the information has to be packed in such a way to emphasize your skills and creativity without being overly promotional.

To help, 12 members of Forbes Agency Council examine the key elements to keep in mind when creating an effective case study.

Members explain how to create an effective and powerful case study for your business.

1. Don't Make It About Yourself

The wrong way to approach a case study is to make it about you and your process. The reader cares less about your motivation and more about the results your efforts created. Start off by describing the results that you created and then go into the general detail of your strategic and tactical approach to delivering those results. - John Gumas , Gumas Advertising

2. Tell A Story

The best case studies tell a story, rather than recite a chronology of facts or data points. To create a story arc, start with a few sentences describing the situation, followed by a few sentences highlighting the "dramatic tension" (e.g. X almost happened, Y threatened to derail the effort), and conclude with a few sentences tying the resolution to the value or point of the product or service. - Beth Noymer Levine , SmartMouth Communications

3. Lead With A Solution

Case studies are, by their very nature, boring. It is important to break past that by creating case studies that strike at the very problem a lead needs help with. Leading with a problem and demonstrating how you fixed it is the best way to get attention -- especially if it can be produced in an engaging way, such as through video or audio media. - Stefan Pollack , The Pollack PR Marketing Group

4. Include Relevant Data

It's great that you worked with a certain company, but what did you really do for them? That should be defined in the case study. If you can't define it in numbers and results, then think about using the brand in a testimonial instead. A case study is just that -- a study of what happened in a particular case. Make sure you tell the whole story. - Christine Wetzler , Pietryla PR

5. Always Use Specific Numbers

If you're going to show an increase in a certain metric, use the actual number. When you say something like "we increased conversions by 500%," it sets off a red flag for people. They'll think you just made it up. But if you show real numbers and even have the screenshots to back it up, it'll become more relevant and believable. - Greg Trimble , Lemonade Stand

6. Keep It Succinct And Pass On The Fluff

The vast majority of people skim content, including case studies. You have to put yourself in your prospect's shoes and understand what they want. They're primarily looking for the success you've provided the client. So focus on that and skip on any fluff content that doesn't align around that. - Nishank Khanna , Demand Roll

7. Tailor Them To Your Audience

Sure, you're going to have generic case studies, but when seeing a client, ensure that you really understand the problem the client faces. Then make your case show how you've solved the problem before. You can highlight different capabilities based on different needs of the client. - Emilie Tabor , IMA - Influencer Marketing Agency

8. Make It Multi-Format

If you can get case studies, quotes and testimonials, always include hard data and tie it to revenue or cost stories. Beyond this, make it multi-format by leveraging graphics, video and text so that it can be consumed and promoted on various platforms. This will maximize the exposure and utility for your successful client case studies. - Zamir Javer , Jumpfactor

9. Let The Images Do The Work

Aside from ensuring a case study is focused on the problem your brand has solved for a customer, nothing brings it to life more than imagery. In lieu of a long-form case study, consider a photo essay with solid captions narrating the case study as a better option for illustrating the value of your product or service and keeping audiences truly engaged. - Emily Porter , Havas Formula

10. Paint A Picture For Your Prospect

Highlighting your wins is great, but remember that a case study should showcase how you solved a client's most pressing problem so that a new prospect can see how you got from point A to Z. This is how we like to tell our clients' success stories: client profile, the challenge, results, strategy and looking toward the future. Remember, the results are just one piece of the puzzle. - Bernard May , National Positions

11. Abstract It First

We think if we write it, someone will accept it. If you remove the outlet from the process, more often, you'll need to rewrite it. Develop the abstract or a couple of abstracts with four elements: company's expertise and solution; customer's industry and challenges; what solution you delivered; why that solution is so innovative. Offer the outlet a chance to contribute, then write with insight. - Dean Trevelino , Trevelino/Keller

12. Know When To Insert Them Into The Campaign

We've analyzed user footprint data on the inbound journey and see a clear trend. Most people are only interested in case studies once they are convinced that a service provider could be a good fit for them. Case studies usually come after reviewing staff profiles and thought leadership content. Insert them too soon and they lose their value in the sales campaign. - Randy Shattuck , The Shattuck Group

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Sway: An Inspiring Case Study of a Regenerative Brand with a Powerful and Unique Brand Strategy

Brand Value Proposition: What Is It and How to Create One?

Brand Vision vs. Mission: Understanding the Difference (With 15 Real-World Examples)

The Importance of Brand Localization (+ Successful Examples)

In the search for ethical branding case studies, Sway is a B2B brand that caught my attention.

Not only does it have a fun, beautiful, and well-executed B2B brand, but it’s also one of the few businesses that manages to go beyond sustainability and embed the regeneration of nature at the core of its brand’s DNA and actions.

Amidst the dire consequences of plastic waste and climate change, Sway has emerged as a beacon of hope. The brand uses the power of seaweed to create plastic alternatives that not only avoid harm but actively replenish the Earth. With a purpose-driven brand strategy and a deep commitment to regenerating nature, Sway is a beautiful example of an innovative brand working on building a future where people and the planet thrive together.

I hope this case study can inspire entrepreneurs and brand strategists to create better brands and serve as a compelling example of branding at the service of sustainability. In this article, we’ll dive into the world of Sway, exploring their innovative products, inspiring branding journey, and the regenerative way forward.

50 Video Lessons | In-Depth Workbook | Templates | Support The Ultimate Brand Building System is now open for registration. Enroll today to stand out in your market and create a future-proof brand!

Table of Contents

About the Brand

Sway is a US start-up dedicated to creating seaweed-based, compostable alternatives to plastic, beginning with flexible packaging that matches the performance of traditional plastics.

In 2023, they won the TOM FORD Plastic Innovation Prize, adding to previous accolades like the Beyond the Bag Challenge in 2021.

Diving Into the World of Sway

Julia, a designer who specialized in creating brand and packaging systems, often found herself introducing plastic into her designs. However, she realized that design could be crucial in facilitating the transition to plastic-free solutions, as she believed plastic waste was ultimately a design flaw.

After conducting a comprehensive evaluation of all available plastic alternatives, Julia discovered that few solutions were truly better across all criteria. Each alternative made compromises in terms of feedstock sustainability, decomposition rate, performance, or cost. She even found that many bioplastics had their own unique set of consequences.

“In my pursuit of solutions, I became obsessed with the third pillar of the circular economy, which asks that we regenerate natural systems. What if replacements for plastic could actually replenish life? Despite my non-technical background, it was clear that there’s a wealth of overlooked potential solutions in nature which embody the concept of regeneration. Mycelium, scoby, microalgae, agricultural waste, seaweed – all these renewable resources can be leveraged into new innovations while giving back to ecosystems as they grow.”

Seaweed, in particular, caught Julia’s attention. Growing up in the Monterey Bay area, she was already well-acquainted with underwater forests and ocean farms. She admired the beauty, diversity, and abundance of seaweed and was intrigued by its rich natural polymer content. Julia researched seaweed’s potential as a feedstock to replace plastics and discovered it met all the necessary criteria. Seaweed grows rapidly, requires minimal carbon-intensive inputs, thrives without fresh water or pesticides, and is readily available along nearly every coastline worldwide.

As the vision for Sway began to take shape, Julia and her co-founder, Matt, embarked on a journey to visit farms and engage with scientists. They drove along the Pan-American Highway from Berkeley to Peru, meeting with seaweed cultivators along the way.

“We found that seaweed farms naturally support improved water chemistry, biodiversity, and coastal communities. New science even suggests seaweed can store massive amounts of carbon.”

This is how Sway was born—an innovative brand redefining how we think about materials and packaging.

A True Purpose-Led Brand Strategy at the Service of Sustainability

Sway's founders holding seaweed and their product

Sway’s brand strategy derives directly from the founders’ beliefs and the brand’s story. This makes it purpose-led and very consistent across all touchpoints.

However, as you will discover, some aspects make the strategy quite unique, especially the brand’s community-focused communication strategy (which started long before the product launch) and the visual identity, which is very different from what we usually see in the B2B world.

These unique elements make Sway a fascinating case study from a brand-building perspective, offering insights for other brands to learn from.

Brand Purpose

Sway’s purpose is to lead the way in regenerative design, creating packaging materials that not only avoid harm but actively restore and replenish the planet.

By prioritizing a conscious process and striving to undo the damage caused by traditional plastics, Sway aims to combat climate change and plastic pollution globally.

“While traditional plastics contribute to climate change at every step of their toxic existence, Sway materials are made with process in mind. We strive to undo the harms of plastic pollution everywhere, from the ocean to your backyard.”

Brand Vision

The brand envisions a world with regeneration as its core, “where we design not simply to avoid harm, but to restore and replenish our aching planet.” This vision drives Sway’s research and development efforts.

Brand Mission

A brand’s mission is its ‘master plan’ to achieve its vision. It describes how the brand aims to conduct daily operations and make decisions to serve its purpose and achieve its vision.

For Sway, it is to embody all three pillars of the circular economy: design out waste, keep materials in use, and regenerate natural systems.

“This methodology is reflected in our product portfolio and throughout our entire value chain. With a holistic approach, we can regenerate social and ecological systems harmed by climate change and plastic pollution.”

Brand Positioning: Standing out in a Sea of Green

In a market increasingly saturated with “sustainable” products, Sway differentiates itself by going beyond sustainability and choosing truly regenerative solutions.

They are innovation-focused and deeply committed to solving the plastic crisis by developing their research on materials. As Julia states, “80% of environmental waste is determined at the design stage. Designers can wield their power and influence to make ‘better’ materials beautiful, accessible, and efficient.”

By positioning itself as a leader in regenerative design, Sway sets itself apart from competitors and appeals to brands and consumers looking for more than “green” products.

Brand Promise

The company promises to design materials that replenish the planet, from sea to soil. This statement is prominently displayed on the brand’s website.

Product Strategy: Pioneering Seaweed Packaging Solutions

Image of Sway's products (seaweed packaging)

A brand’s products or services are vital in shaping its identity. They embody the brand’s uniqueness, actions, and choices. Sway’s product strategy is a perfect example of products that are fully aligned with the brand’s strategic vision. The products (seaweed packaging) embody the brand’s core principles and effectively fulfill its promise (materials that replenish the planet), which is essential for enhancing the brand’s reputation and nurturing trust within its community.

How are they achieving this? Let’s see in practice.

Product Development Process

After conducting their own research and development, the team has developed a whole range of home-compostable plastic replacement materials made from seaweed. They are designed for various uses and sectors, such as packaging for apparel, household items, beauty products, and food.

Some are available for purchase, and others are being piloted by innovation partners dedicated to evaluating and enhancing their products in development.

The current range of products consists of:

Seaweed Windows (available for purchase): These 100% biobased seaweed windows are clear, durable, and food-safe. They are derived primarily from seaweed and are certified to decompose in home and industrial compost.
TPSea™ (available to pilot) 100% renewable seaweed resin, designed to replace plastics
TPSea Flex™ (available to pilot): Versatile film made with seaweed, built for impact at scale.
Polybags (available to pilot): Compostable seaweed packaging that looks & feels like luxury.

The Main Material

Seaweed is more than a sustainable raw material—it’s a natural resource with regeneration virtues. “Seaweed is an incredible ocean crop that can purify and clean our seas, enhance underwater biodiversity, and boost coastal economies, securing climate-resilient employment for those most vulnerable to the impacts of our changing planet,” Julia explains. By choosing seaweed, Sway is not only reducing plastic waste but also actively supporting the regeneration of marine ecosystems and the livelihoods of coastal communities.

Sourcing and Post-consumption Considerations

Sway has a strong sourcing strategy in place and carefully designs the products to be able to return to Earth safely after use. Their evolving portfolio of products is:

Made with responsibly sourced seaweed
Nontoxic & GMO-free
Home & industrially compostable
Supports healthy ecosystems & communities

Brand Identity: Unique for a B2B Company

Building a brand that stands out in the packaging material industry is complex. B2B companies are often very corporate and rarely engage with the broader community.

Sway chose a different approach. The brand has been designed with a unique personality, a certain proximity to the public, and a bold visual identity that stands out in a sea of similar-looking green, sustainable brands.

The name “Sway” conveys the graceful motion of seaweed in the ocean. It represents the product and the brand’s philosophy of adapting and following nature’s cycles.

Brand Values and Personality

The brand is built around the values of sustainability, innovation, and collaboration.

Sway’s brand personality is vibrant, approachable, positive, solutions-oriented, and visionary. This is reflected in their messaging and tone of voice, which are focused on finding solutions to current sustainability challenges through engaging, educational visuals designed to inspire.

Logo and Visual Identity

In March 2022, the company redesigned its logo to better reflect the brand. The redesign includes two versions of the logo (a horizontal one and one composed of the letter “S”). The chosen typography for the “S” logo version, including a 3D-glowing font, is a bold choice that distinguishes it from brands in the packaging and sustainability markets.

“Sway is blooming. Our team and network are growing, major milestones are just around the corner. We’re getting our sea legs, you could say. Today, we are excited to share that our visual identity is evolving with us. Say hello to our new logo and wordmark! This evolution is both functional and symbolic. We are a company that aims to blur the lines between nature, technology, and design. We’re firm in our belief that communication and design have a critical role to play in the plastic-free transition. That means we need a bold, easily recognizable mark that can be used on packaging of any size, building trust and recognition among our community.”

The brand sets itself apart with a striking imagery style. The brands uses icons and elements such as seaweed icons, a colorful wheel and a vibrant rainbow.

Sway prioritizes high-quality photography and video production, showing professionalism. On Instagram, their primary social media platform, each post showcases meticulous attention to detail and graphic design, creating a harmonious and colorful blend with surrounding content. The website is also carefully crafted, offering an engaging visual experience reinforcing the brand’s overall aesthetic.

Last but not least, the chosen color palette is bright and unique within the sustainability movement. The brand uses a gradation of colors ranging from blue to red, orange and violet, recalling the colors of the ocean floor and corals.

“Our new visuals are inspired by the ocean, evoking its primordial currents and the dynamic form of seaweed⁠—one of Earth’s oldest beings. Mirroring the symmetries and fluidities of nature, Sway moves nimbly within industrial systems, transforming dated practices to enable the regenerative futures we can build together.”

Engaging the Public: How Sway Communicates Its Brand

Sway’s brand communication is a masterclass in engaging and inspiring their audience.

Despite being a B2B brand without a final product for several years, Sway has amassed an incredible following on Instagram , with over 130K followers. Through stunning visuals, educational content, and inspiring stories, Sway built an engaged community before the launch of their product by sharing the brand’s story from the very beginning.

“Systems change is only possible with behavior change. If our community understands the value of seaweed, regeneration, ocean health, and circularity, they will go beyond just advocating to their favorite brands that they don’t want plastic. Instead, they’ll have suggestions for how to replace it!” Julia shares.

Today, the brand continues to invite its audience to become part of the solution to plastic waste and climate change. It shares information about its products but also insightful content around sustainability, initiatives from other brands, behind-the-scenes images, and much more.

Their communication strategy is very collaborative, and the founders also represent the brand at events and in interviews, helping the company reach new audiences.

“Once you start to learn about the tangible benefits of seaweed, there are so many other stories to uncover – new science, frontline farmer stories, ocean health, regeneration, circularity, composting, and beyond,” Julia explains. By sharing these stories and engaging their community in meaningful conversations, Sway is building a loyal community and movement of empowered consumers ready to embrace regenerative solutions.

Key Lessons and Practical Take-Aways

To wrap up this case study, here are some practical takeaways and ideas to help you in your brand-building process:

#1 Spend time clarifying your brand’s purpose and vision for the future

Brand strategies are long-term, and establishing a strong brand requires a clear strategy to guide your actions toward future goals. Sway was founded on a distinct purpose shared by its founders, along with a well-defined vision for contributing to a better future. This clarity enabled them to organically develop a company, brand, and products aligned with their forward-looking vision, ensuring that their day-to-day actions and decisions are consistently informed and purposeful.

#2 Explore regeneration practices as part of your brand’s activities

Achieving sustainability is already an excellent priority, but why not take a step further and thoughtfully explore the inclusion of regenerative practices in your brand’s activities? This approach not only encourages you to think outside the box and bring unique, positive solutions to society, but it’s also a way to stand out and position your brand for a future that increasingly demands sustainability. However, it’s essential to ensure that these initiatives are genuine and not just a façade for greenwashing. Remember, no brand is 100% perfect, and every meaningful step toward sustainability and regeneration counts. To start exploring the concept of regeneration, you can explore this resource that highlights various domains where regenerative solutions are possible.

#3 Adopt an engaged community approach

Sway has built an engaged community thanks to educational and inspiring content over its brand-building journey. Consider focusing on creating a community around your brand, be it virtual or non-virtual, and around the concept of a shared purpose and values. Building this connection strengthens loyalty and empowers your audience to contribute to your brand’s vision.

#4 Ensure your products deliver your brand’s promise

Unlike humans, brands often don’t get second chances. Focus on creating products that solve a real problem, truly embody your brand’s strategic vision, and fulfill promises at every consumer touchpoint. This alignment reinforces trust and credibility, showing that your actions match your words.

#5 Stand out and be bold

To build a strong brand, it’s not enough to do better than your competitors, you also need to be different. Don’t be afraid to differentiate your brand with a distinctive identity within your industry. Being unapologetically unique yet professional not only sets you apart but also attracts like-minded individuals who share your universe

#6 Invest in high-quality communication materials

Prioritize high-quality visuals and communication materials from the outset to enhance brand perception and trust. Investing in helpful content and professional presentation signals professionalism and increases the value of your brand in the eyes of consumers.

#7 Collaborate to build a supportive network

Cultivate partnerships that create a network of supporters within the industry and the wider public. Like Sway, you can focus on building a positive and collaborative brand ecosystem for shared growth and innovation. Collaborating with others amplifies your impact and helps you reach your long-term objectives.

Cover Image: Founders of Sway. Credits: SnackTime

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Narrowing, slowing and closing plastics loops: companies’ circularity strategies, performance measurement and accountability to end plastic pollution

Learning from the case study Evaluating progress on plastic pollution…

Climeworks Joins the World Business Council for Sustainable Development

Geneva, 12 September, 2024 – The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) announces that Climeworks, a global leader…

Global Network: BCSD Taiwan releases “Nature Positive – Taiwan Report”

Taipei, September 2024: WBCSD’s Global Network partner BCSD Taiwan, with…

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Narrowing, slowing and closing plastics loops

Delphine Garin and Larissa van der Feen

Learning from the case study Evaluating progress on plastic pollution mitigation: circularity & plastic footprint .

We face a global resource crisis where demand is outstripping supply, but at the same time, every day, the equivalent of over 2,000 garbage trucks full of plastic are dumped into our oceans, rivers and lakes. The system is broken. Today, only 9% of plastic is recycled worldwide. The resource-inefficient, take-make-waste plastic economy is at the core of the plastic pollution crisis.

Businesses have a key role to play to end plastic pollution, although they cannot do it alone. Policies and finances are needed for companies to realize their circularity potential. This is what the UN Treaty on Plastic Pollution is designed to provide. At the same time that UN Member States delegates continue the negotiations on this UN Treaty in 2024, EA Earth Action developed the case study Evaluating progress on plastic pollution mitigation: circularity and plastic footprint, supported by WBCSD, and looked at business circularity strategies and performance measurement.

What circularity strategies used in the case study have the most impact on reducing plastic pollution?

The case study compares the impact on plastic pollution of several circularity actions between 2023 and 2040 that are implemented by a large sports equipment producer 1 (with textiles, sports equipment, shoes and packaging as products using plastic). The waste management hierarchy informs the circularity strategies in the different scenarios of the case study – an order of preference for the sustainable management of waste – starting with waste prevention and elimination as the preferred option, then reuse, recycling, recovery and finally disposal (sending waste to landfill) as the last resort.

To measure the impact of the circularity actions implemented by the company, two metrics are used in the case study: material circularity (measuring the performance of the company in closing material loops; and plastic pollution (measuring the tons of plastic waste that are mismanaged, including leakage to ocean and waterways).

In Scenario B (Scenario A is business as usual), the company increases recycled content and improves eco-design, enhancing its circularity score but not reducing plastic pollution due to the lack of downstream waste management. In Scenario C, the company adds repair services and take-back schemes, boosting material recovery and further improving circularity, but plastic pollution still rises, though at a slower rate, due to company growth. In Scenario D, the company adopts reduction strategies, such as reducing plastic content and eliminating single-use plastics, along with existing recovery efforts, leading to the most significant reduction in plastic pollution, even though the circularity score remains the same as Scenario C (the Circular Transition Indicators used in the case study do not currently factor in reduction actions in its methodology).

What are the key actions and associated indicators companies should use to measure performance?

The case study shows that actions following the waste hierarchy are needed (including reduction) to reduce plastic pollution, while performance measurement needs to go beyond closing the materials loops to integrate actions focused on reduction. Therefore, actions and associated indicators are about 2

Closing the loop with the indicator that measures materials circularity. The indicator used in the case study comes from the WBCSD Circular Transition Indicators , measuring the company’s effectiveness in closing the loops between the materials streams entering the company (i.e. linear/circular inflows) and those leaving the company (i.e linear/circular outflows). This indicator should be complemented by:
Narrowing the loop with an indicator that reflects the absolute reduction of the total amount of materials a company puts on the market, including the elimination of problematic and unnecessary plastic products. It should be noted that if companies plan to move to plastic alternatives, they should always adopt a scientific LCA-based approach to avoid unintended consequences.
Slowing the loop with an indicator that shows the increased product longevity and the transition to reuse/refill models. Although embedded in CTI (circularity of outflow and lifetime extension) it deserves a separate measurement to reflect efforts from companies to move away from single-use and short-lived plastics.

Companies can only effectively manage their performance on circularity and end plastic pollution thanks to implementing these complementary actions and using indicators that reflect the full set of actions associated with the waste management hierarchy.

And since the ultimate goal is to end plastic pollution, companies should use the plastic pollution impact metric (highlighting mismanaged plastic waste) as developed by the Plastic Footprint Network to evaluate the effectiveness of their circularity strategies.

What is corporate accountability in the context of the UN Treaty?

The UN Treaty on plastic pollution will include a multi-stakeholder action agenda (as mandated by UN resolution 5/14) as a mechanism to engage non-state actors in the implementation of the treaty. While the UN Treaty should clearly define the mandate of the multistakeholder action agenda with strong engagement rules, the action agenda provides an opportunity to embed clear accountability rules so that progress can be reported year after year – including progress from business in their transition to circular and sustainable products.

In addition, the call from CDP to include mandatory corporate disclosure in the global plastics treaty is a key accountability enabler to allow for global harmonization of plastic-related data. This would ensure that consistent, comparable, and high-quality data can be shared with stakeholders – including financial institutions – to make informed decisions.

The UN Treaty on Plastic Pollution needs to provide a robust enabling policy environment so that companies can accelerate their actions towards a circular economy. Without waiting for the UN Treaty to be implemented, companies can start taking actions as shown in the case study. This case study complements the draft plastics protocol we published ahead of INC-3 last November. The plastics protocol seeks to generate alignment among organizations to create common ground for plastic-related target setting, accounting, and roadmap development.

Real-life modeling of a company’s plastic pollution mitigation actions that Earth Action collaborated on in 2023. Sales volumes and company growth have been altered to protect the company’s anonymity. ↩︎
Reference for the Narrow, Slow, Close the flows: Bocken, N. M., De Pauw, I., Bakker, C., & Van Der Grinten, B. (2016). Product design and business model strategies for a circular economy. Journal of industrial and production engineering, 33(5), 308-320. ↩︎

A collaborative step toward ending plastic pollution

9 March, 2022

Plastic pollution and corporate accountability: toward harmonized disclosure metrics

25 November, 2022

Tackle plastic pollution and join the Alliance to End Plastic Waste

23 January, 2019

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Tạp chí Khoa học và Công nghệ (May 2024)

The connection between vocabulary size and vocabulary learning strategies: a case study of English as foreign language learners at UD-UFLS

Nguyen Anh Thi,
Nguyen Le Hong Giang,
Nguyen Thi My Hang

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Undoubtedly, the significance of employing effective strategies for vocabulary acquisition in language learning cannot be overstated. Following this, the authors' research delves into the potential relationship between vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) and the vocabulary size of undergraduate students at the University of Danang - University of Foreign Language Studies (UD-UFLS). This study has three primary objectives: firstly, to gather and analyze the diverse strategies employed by undergraduate students for acquiring new English vocabulary; secondly, to examine the vocabulary size of these university students; and finally, to investigate the impact of VLS on the overall vocabulary size of the learners. Through this comprehensive approach, the authors' aim to gain deeper insights into the dynamic interplay between strategies and vocabulary knowledge, ultimately serving as a foundation for students at the university to make well-informed choices as they embark on their language -learning journey.

vocabulary learning strategies (vls)
vocabulary size
second-english-language learners

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How CEOs Are Using Gen AI for Strategic Planning

Graham Kenny,
Marek Kowalkiewicz,
Kim Oosthuizen

Real-world examples of what these new tools can — and can’t — do.

For business leaders, especially at relatively small companies, the idea of applying gen AI to strategic planning is mouthwatering. This article explores the potential and limits of AI in helping such companies chart their strategies. Through the lens of two disguised case studies the authors show how gen AI can help companies identify some challenges and opportunities that managers missed, overcoming the human biases, but by the same token missed some possibilities rooted in the company’s specific capabilities. And although gen AI was less able to imagine possible future scenarios because its forecasts were entirely rooted in historical data, clever promoting enabled it to surface issues and questions that human managers ignored. The authors conclude that knowing gen AI’s weaknesses allows managers to take advantage of its strengths. The key is to view gen AI as a tool that augments, rather than replaces, your strategic thinking and decision-making.

The business community is all atwitter at the prospect that gen AI — through the likes of ChatGPT, you.com, and Claude.ai — will revolutionize business decision-making. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, even declared “you are about to enter the greatest golden age of human possibility.”

Graham Kenny is the CEO of Strategic Factors and author of Strategy Discovery . He is a recognized expert in strategy and performance measurement who helps managers, executives, and boards create successful organizations in the private, public, and not-for-profit sectors. He has been a professor of management in universities in the U.S. and Canada.
MK Marek Kowalkiewicz is a Professor and Chair in Digital Economy at QUT Business School in Brisbane, Australia. He was a Founding Research Manager of SAP’s Machine Learning lab in Singapore, a Global Research Program Lead at SAP Research, and a Research Fellow at Microsoft Research Asia. His new book is “ The Economy of Algorithms: AI and the Rise of the Digital Minions “. He writes a weekly newsletter, “ The Economy of Algorithms “.
KO Kim Oosthuizen is the Head of Artificial Intelligence Australia and New Zealand at SAP, based in Sydney, Australia. She founded the SAP AI Council in Australia to focus on the responsible adoption, operation, and scaling of AI and lectures part-time at various business schools. You can connect with or follow her on LinkedIn.

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What circularity strategies used in the case study have the most impact on reducing plastic pollution? The case study compares the impact on plastic pollution of several circularity actions between 2023 and 2040 that are implemented by a large sports equipment producer 1 (with textiles, sports equipment, shoes and packaging as products using ...
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The connection between vocabulary size and vocabulary learning
This study has three primary objectives: firstly, to gather and analyze the diverse strategies employed by undergraduate students for acquiring new English vocabulary; secondly, to examine the vocabulary size of these university students; and finally, to investigate the impact of VLS on the overall vocabulary size of the learners.
How CEOs Are Using Gen AI for Strategic Planning
Through the lens of two disguised case studies the authors show how gen AI can help companies identify some challenges and opportunities that managers missed, overcoming the human biases, but by ...