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3:25 PM · Jan 17, 2022Twitter Web App

So the next question is obviously: what do you do when you’re studying cases? The authors suggest something surprising to me: you mark up all the possible concepts that are instantiated in each case (and here you might need an expert) and then link to all OTHER cases.

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The tl;dr seems to be — 1. Collect 10-20 'crossroad cases', which are cases that are densely packed with conceptual features core to the domain. 2. Mark up the concepts across this set (perhaps using tags or backlinks?) 3. Link back to crossroad cases when adding new cases.

4. At some point you will overlearn the crossroad cases and hit something called 'epitome mode', where a small distinctive part of a case will evoke the rest of the case. 5. You can then layer in more complex questions around the cases, like (cont.)

"Find surprising differences between cases that appear similar, and find surprising similarities between cases that appear different on the surface." or "How is Case A like Case B but not like Case C", building the nuances of expert understanding.

One interesting thing this approach seems to do is to help you resist the idea that there is JUST one cause, or to fixate on just ONE 'example case'. I can totally see how this might be helpful when analysing companies, or when reasoning from historical business analogy.