How Four Seasons Learnt to Handle Recessions
The hotel industry is one of the most cyclical ones there is. How do you build a ‘blue chip’ hotel company in such a cyclical industry?
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Commoncog Case Library
Home of the calibration case method.
Accelerate your understanding of business by browsing our case selections. Pick a concept, and then read the cases within them. As you read, compare and contrast between each case: what are some surprising similarities? What are some surprising dissimilarities?
Doing this simulates what experts do when they examine cases in business and investing. Learn more →
Full access to the Case Library is a premium feature for Commoncog Members.
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100+ cases, 20+ concept series
And growing! The case library receives steady updates of new Calibration Cases.
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Progress tracking
Mark cases as read, and view your progress through a concept series.
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Know when a new case is published, or new series begins.
Recent Concepts
See all →Navigating Disruptive Shifts
16 cases
How businesses and businesspeople deal with disruptive shifts — where something they believed to be true, or that they had built their business around, changes at a fundamental level.
Business Expansion
12 cases
Business expansion can be fraught with danger. This concept sequence covers cases of companies that grew successfully, as well as those that died from over-expansion.
Counter-Positioning
21 cases
A collection of cases on counter-positioning as a competitive advantage.
Branding
11 cases
Branding is one of the hardest competitive moats to build, and one of the most powerful.
The Capital Cycle
17 cases
Cases of companies navigating the capital cycle: whether successfully, or not.
Capital Expertise
27 cases
What capital expertise looks like in a business context — both the good and the bad.
New Cases
See all →The Pritzkers: Capital Allocation, Family Style
A synthesis of all the known public sources on how the Pritzker family made their wealth. The Pritzkers own the Hyatt Hotel chain and Marmon, an industrials conglomerate. This is a story of incredible capital allocation.
The Creation of Four Seasons, and How it Transitioned to an Asset-Light Luxury Model
Four Seasons is known today as the most consistent scaled luxury hotel brand. But how did it shift from hotel owner to asset-light manager, and how did it scale?
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How BlackBerry Died
How the BlackBerry phone was killed by the iPhone ... a not-so-straightforward story of technological disruption.
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How Blockbuster Nearly Killed Netflix, and then Stole Defeat from the Jaws of Victory
How a so-called technological disruptor, Netflix, was nearly killed by the incumbent, Blockbuster, before it made a grievous error.
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When Databases Were a Hot Technology: The Rise of Oracle
It’s difficult to imagine today, but databases were once a hot technology, in a crowded field. This is the story of how Oracle won the database wars of the 70s.
How Ford Survived the Great Financial Crisis
Ford was the only American automaker who didn’t need a bailout in the Great Recession. How did they adapt to an unprecedented financial calamity?
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How Amazon Survived the Dotcom Bust
Amazon is known as one of the few dotcom darlings that survived the dotcom bust. This is how they did it.
Scaling McKinsey: Inventing Management Consulting
McKinsey founded his eponymous firm, but died before it scaled globally. This is the story of how McKinsey’s protege Marvin Bower built McKinsey into the firm we know today.
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The Origins of McKinsey
How an accounting professor started a firm that changed the world.
Patagonia: The Company That Chose to Grow Slowly
How Yvon Chouinard — a ‘reluctant businessman’ built Patagonia to show the world that it was possible to make money and do good for the environment.
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How Swatch Saved the Swiss Watch Industry, But Not From Quartz
This is the story of how the creation of the Swatch Group, and its namesake plastic watch, led to the turnaround of the entire Swiss watch industry.