I’ve been planning case-based teaching for a business AI course. Initially I assumed buying HBS / HBR cases would just work. Reading the licensing terms revealed a minefield. This is the 2026-05 investigation.
Cannot use
| Source | Why |
|---|---|
| Harvard / HBS / HBR cases | Need HBP coursepack or licensing; personal purchase ≠ permission to distribute to students; HBP terms also restrict using AI to generate derivative works |
| MIT Sloan Teaching Resources Library | The index page mentions Creative Commons, but spot-checking individual PDFs reveals CC BY-NC-ND (with NonCommercial + NoDerivatives); unsuitable for paid courses, can’t be modified and redistributed |
| Stanford GSB free cases / The Case Centre free cases | Free ≠ open source; without case-by-case confirmation of commercial usability, don’t use them in a commercial course |
| GitHub case repos with no LICENSE | Default to “all rights reserved” under law |
“Free” and “commercially usable” are completely different things. I had this wrong.
Usable open sources
| Source | Background | License | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| UBC Open Case Studies | University of British Columbia cross-departmental OER, since 2015 | CC BY 4.0—commercial use OK, modifications OK, attribution required | Sustainability, public policy, education, social issues; some business cases |
| OpenCaseStudies.org | Teams affiliated with Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health | Most repos MIT or CC BY 4.0, confirm per repo | AI / data workflow demos; real data analysis, statistics, dashboards, ML |
| World Bank Open Knowledge Repository | World Bank | Most content CC BY or CC BY 4.0, confirm per item; watch out for third-party charts | Public-data-driven policy / business / development cases |
UBC Open Case Studies
UBC = University of British Columbia, a top public research university in Vancouver, Canada. Open Case Studies is not exclusive to Sauder Business School—it’s a cross-departmental open educational resource. Around 69 pages, mostly on sustainability, public policy, education, and social issues. Pure MBA finance / strategy cases are sparse.
Verdict: good as an “open case” base, but the topics aren’t pure MBA finance / strategy. Course designers need to add business decision frameworks on top.
OpenCaseStudies.org
Not an MBA case library, but an open data science case library. Official positioning: students learn statistics and data science from real data. Used by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg, Harvard, Harvard T.H. Chan, UC Berkeley, Smith College. 2024 education paper: Open Case Studies: Statistics and Data Science Education through Real-World Applications.
Verdict: great for AI-course demos of “real data → analysis → AI-assisted interpretation → decision recommendation.” To get the feel of an MBA case, you need to wrap it in a managerial decision scenario.
Market signals for MBA × AI Case
- NUCB Business School: Case Education Using Generative AI—2025 workshop with Harvard Business Publishing and AAPBS on AI-era case-based instruction
- Newcastle University Business School: LOV AI Co-Creation Approach—using ChatGPT o3 Deep Research + instructor verification to produce an extended case for a Finance and Investment MBA module, claiming case development compressed from weeks to about four hours, but the core is lecturer oversight and verification
- Hunet MBA AI Case Study (Korea, 2026): AI coach adapts case analysis lens to student’s industry / function
- Noyes AI: positioned as an AI case study platform, immersive scenarios, decision-making practice, references a Kellogg MBA student testimonial
- LiveCase: turns static cases into AI simulation / role-play / assessment, referenced by Harvard Business Impact and INSEAD
The signal: MBA × AI case method is being seriously explored by multiple business schools, but there’s no mature open-source skill or framework ready to fork.
Existing GitHub skill evaluation
2026-05-10 search across “MBA case study skill,” “Claude skill case study,” etc. Conclusion: no mature open-source skill specifically built for MBA case method teaching. Drawable references split into two clusters—consulting case analysis, and marketing/customer case-study writing.
| Repo / Skill | License | Type | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| DogInfantry/claude-skill-management-consultant-B1 | Apache-2.0 | Management consulting / case interview / business problem solving | Closest to MBA case analysis. Has issue tree, hypothesis-driven thinking, MECE, Pyramid Principle, profitability / market entry / M&A worked cases |
| travisjneuman/.claude — case-interview-practice | MIT | Consulting case interview practice | profitability, market sizing, market entry, M&A, pricing, operations, growth strategy frameworks; CASE method flow |
| snzeeee/claude-skill-case-study-builder | MIT | Freelancer / portfolio case study | Not MBA. Turns interviews into Challenge-Solution-Results |
| gtmagents/gtm-agents — case-studies | Apache-2.0 | GTM / customer story | CHIC: Challenge → Hypothesis → Implementation → Change |
What mba-ai-case-method could look like
If I were to build one, the positioning is not “write marketing case studies,” but “turn open cases into AI-assisted MBA discussion classes.” Modules:
- Case Intake: load open cases from UBC / OpenCaseStudies / World Bank, confirm licensing, source provenance, modification scope
- Teaching Note Builder: produce case synopsis, learning objectives, discussion questions, board plan, debrief points
- MBA Lens Selector: pick the analytical lens (strategy, finance, marketing, operations, org behavior, ethics)
- AI Task Designer: break the case into AI tasks—data cleaning, competitive analysis, financial modeling, decision memo, presentation, negotiation role-play
- Instructor Guardrail: require fact verification, mark AI inferences, prohibit generating unlicensed derivatives of HBS/HBR cases
- Assessment Rubric: grade decision quality, evidence use, tradeoff reasoning, AI collaboration process—not whether the answer looks polished
Direction for AgentCrew Academy
Why train seed instructors first, not students directly
- I personally don’t have MBA training. I shouldn’t pretend to fully teach the MBA case method
- Seed instructors with MBA frameworks can attach AI workflows to strategy, finance, organization, marketing knowledge structures
- My strength is training them to convert their domain expertise into AI collaboration flow: data prep, case restructuring, prompt design, discussion facilitation, decision memo
Course prototype
Open case material → Seed instructor restructures with MBA frame → AI collaboration task design
→ Students analyze case with AI → Instructor facilitates discussion → Decision memo / deck / modelPotential products
- MBA Case × AI Seed Instructor Track
- AI Case Method Co-Creation Workshop
- Coaching service for converting open cases into AI teaching plans
- Public course series built on UBC / OpenCaseStudies / World Bank as base material
Attribution template
When using CC BY 4.0 material, the footer can read:
Adapted from UBC Open Case Studies, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Changes were made for classroom use.
The core finding of this investigation: HBS / HBR cases face growing licensing restrictions in the AI era, but the open ecosystem hasn’t matured yet. Whoever first packages UBC / OpenCaseStudies / World Bank into “AI-ready MBA case material” and trains a cohort of seed instructors will be positioned for the next wave of business education.