Casebook
The Great Casebook
Real decisions under real constraints — from Apple and Blackstone to Singapore's water and Rome's coinage — each read as Situation, Options, Decision, Result, Lessons.
Apple, 1997: Ninety Days from Bankruptcy
How a near-dead computer company chose focus over breadth — and became the most valuable firm on earth.
Read →Disney Buys Pixar: Paying $7.4bn to Buy Back Its Own Culture
When your partner out-innovates you, do you fight, copy, or acquire — and protect what you bought?
Read →IKEA and the Flat Pack: Designing the Business Around a Constraint
A snapped-off table leg turned a furniture shop into a global logistics machine.
Read →Blackstone's Hilton Deal: Buying at the Top and Winning Anyway
The largest hotel buyout in history closed weeks before the 2008 crash. It became one of private equity's most profitable deals.
Read →WeWork: The $47bn Story That Unravelled in Six Weeks
A real-estate arbitrage dressed as a tech platform met the discipline of a public prospectus.
Read →Singapore's Water: Turning a National Weakness into an Export
A city-state dependent on a neighbour for drinking water made self-sufficiency a fifty-year national project.
Read →Canary Wharf: The Development That Went Bankrupt and Won
Building a second financial district in derelict docklands took a bankruptcy, patience, and the right infrastructure.
Read →Palm Jumeirah: Manufacturing Coastline as a Growth Strategy
Dubai had beach demand but limited shoreline — so it built more shoreline into the sea.
Read →Rome's Silver Denarius: How Debasing the Coin Debased the State
An empire that could not raise enough revenue quietly diluted its money — and paid for it with inflation and distrust.
Read →Netflix: Cannibalising the Business That Was Working
A profitable DVD-by-mail company deliberately attacked its own core to build streaming before anyone forced it to.
Read →Kodak: The Company That Invented Its Own Killer
Kodak built the first digital camera in 1975 — and then spent thirty years protecting the film business it threatened.
Read →Toyota and the Andon Cord: Building Quality Into the Line
Giving every worker the power to stop the entire assembly line looks insane — and became the foundation of the world's best manufacturing system.
Read →The Delta Works: Engineering a Nation Below the Sea
After a flood killed nearly two thousand people in one night, the Netherlands built the largest flood-defence system in history — and turned safety into a permanent institution.
Read →Tulip Mania: The First Great Speculative Bubble
In 1630s Holland, contracts for a single flower bulb changed hands for the price of a house — until, in a matter of days, they were worth almost nothing.
Read →The Venetian Arsenal: The Assembly Line, Four Centuries Early
Long before Ford, Venice could assemble a fully-fitted warship in a single day by standardising parts and moving the ship past stations of workers.
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