OCTOBER 6, 2014

You’ll learn to fail fast, cheap, and early. You’ll learn when to bet big and when work incrementally. You’ll learn to be an entrepreneur.

At the end of the day, there’s only one real way to learn entrepreneurship—by doing it. But we think there’s a shortcut you can take that may allow you to bypass many of the failures, missteps, and blunders that most entrepreneurs encounter along the way, and this is learning via simulation.

In short, you need to stuff your feet into the shoes of a real-world entrepreneur and see the decisions, risks, uncertainties, and motivations through their eyes. You have to take up a scenario that really happened, and play it out as if it’s happening to you. To sit in the midst of the complexities and make decisions.

To figure out how to prioritize, plan, and execute. In this entrepreneurial theater of sorts, you’ll learn to fail over and over again.

Over time, you’ll begin to see how certain actions might lead you astray. The more you fail, the more you’ll learn how to succeed. When the time comes, and you’re finally in a real-world setting where everything is on the line, you’ll be better equipped to make the right choices.

If you’re the lead decision maker in a case, you’ll look at everything in front of you and then figure out where to go next. While you’re playing this role, your classmates might be playing the roles of consumers, competition—you name it, and you’ll have to convince them of a particular strategy (and why they should go along with it).

Some cases contain pages of materials and information while some may be extremely short. In real life, you don’t get a blueprint for forming business strategies—the same goes for the case method.

At its core, the case method is about making quick, informed judgments and taking appropriate action from there. Over time, you’ll learn to recognize patterns and define your decision-making process. You’ll learn to fail fast, cheap, and early. You’ll learn when to bet big and when to work incrementally. You’ll learn to be an entrepreneur.

If you want to see the case method in action, our classroom is open. Sign up to visit a class or feel free to contact us directly with questions.