Getting smart about cases

Not having an MBA, I've often wondered about the case method -- how it works and how it can be applied to solving real business problems. I guess I could go to B-school to figure it out, but it looks like Bill Ellet, the publisher of Training Media Review, saved me a couple of years and tens of thousands in tuition by writing The Case Study Handbook.

Ellet has been teaching students at Harvard Business School how to deal with cases for a dozen years and his practical, well organized book covers how to analyze, discuss, and write convincingly about them. So far, I've just dipped into the book, but I've seen enough to know that it's going into my tower o' reading. Seems like managers who have to deal with these things in the real world would want to read it, too.