Upleveling the Case Study: How AI Augmented a Real-World Entrepreneurial Journey

How could you elevate a business school lecture, and do it by combining human interaction and AI magic?

Last week, Columbia Business School MBA students got to go behind the scenes with the founder of DIG, Adam Eskin.

Adam’s a seriously impressive entrepreneur: he’s built a mission-driven cooking company from zero to over 30 locations; has a wealth of industry knowledge; and is an incredible strategic thinker. What a great person for budding founders to learn from.

But instead of just giving a guest lecture, he wanted to ramp up the session’s interactivity and engagement. So, us and him got together to cook up something fresh.

We built a live case study that featured:

1. Adam’s strategies, successes, screw-ups, and stories from over a decade building DIG
2. A hands-on scenario challenge where student teams designed a strategic growth plan for DIG’s next chapter

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Our 2-hour session included…

• 3 different live briefs, complete with data, constraints, tips and assets - all co-created by Humans & AI (first 20% was me and Adam, middle 60% AI, last 20% us)
  
• A ‘Board Meeting’ canvas, replicating the kind of questions you’d get when doing this for real
  
• AAA card: ask Adam any question, but he’ll only reply in one sentence (tip: design your questions carefully!)
  
• Live progress tracking on the big screen
  
• Teardown session where teams got instant feedback from both Adam and their peers

We also had a couple of crazy AI-generated wildcard scenarios stashed away…

Students got dozens of key questions answered, and built out a real asset. They seemed to enjoy it: we got an NPS score of 50 (‘excellent’, apparently), and one said our session beat regular business school case studies hands down.

The final reveal?

This 2 hour live session was also a prototype of a new experiential learning product we have in the works.

If you DIG this (yeah, I know…), do get in touch. Our new simulator platform can bring this experience to your brand story.

And if you’re feeling hungry, make sure to try DIG’s new crispy chicken recipe.

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