Training.

Training institutes in this field repeat a simple idea: reps under time. The Case Competition archive can be a gym if students treat previous cases as prompts and keep score. You do not need a new case every night. You need a clock and a standard of work.

Fifteen-minute drills.

• Question drill. Read the first page of a case. Write situation, complication, question. Stop.
• Tree drill. From a question only, draw a first split and two levels. Check MECE with a partner.
• Title drill. Rewrite five noun headings as action titles.
• Sizing drill. Size one unit for Hong Kong or the geography in the case. Show formula and sanity check.
• Risk drill. List the two questions a hostile judge will ask. Answer in four sentences.

Ninety-minute team reps.

Pick one archive case. Run a compressed contest: 15 minutes together, 45 minutes split analysis, 20 minutes governing slide, 10 minutes pitch. Score with the public criteria. Rotate roles the next week so the modeller also has to speak.

What “better” looks like.

The recommendation appears in the first minute. The number that matters is auditable. The plan names an owner and a first action. Q&A does not collapse into four people talking at once. These are trainable. Charisma is optional; process is not.

Coaches should resist over-coaching the slides. Watch whether the team can reconstruct the logic without the deck. If they cannot, more decoration will not help. Use coach notes and the insights series as a shared vocabulary.

HBR guides on the original tools page remain useful reference material for business-case writing, finance language, and SWOT scans. Training here is about converting those references into timed behaviour.