Licensed to an organization: checkout asks for the company the purchase is for, its website, and an email address to deliver the files to. A work address is best for the license record; a personal one is accepted. Digital download. All sales are final: no refunds or returns. Each format can be downloaded 3 times, and the links stay valid for 30 days. If you need more, reply to your confirmation email and we will sort it out.
What you are buying
What you get
- 9 verified Decision Cases on IBM, one record per page.
- Each record states the fork, the options on the table, the choice, the reason the company gave, the money committed where the case states it, what happened at one, three and five years, and every source.
- The same records in five files: Excel, JSON, PowerPoint, Word, and PDF.
How to use it
- Open the Excel to compare records side by side and filter by company, date, or verdict.
- Cite a record in a memo from the Word or PDF page; the sources are on the page.
- Load the JSON into your AI workspace so the assistant reasons from verified cases instead of inventing them.
What it is not
- It is not a report. There is no introduction, no analysis across the records, and no recommendation.
- Each record says only what its source story says, so the writing is factual and brief, not narrative.
- If you want the argument, a Strategy Pack makes it; the casebook is the evidence behind it.
About the IBM Casebook
What can you learn from IBM's strategic decisions? How did IBM handle the forks that defined it, and what happened next? The knowledge of these decisions will help you glean insights, inspiration and actionable ideas. The IBM Casebook comprises 9 verified Decision Cases with dated outcomes.
Every record follows the same structure, which is what makes the set useful rather than merely interesting. You see when the fork came, what was on the table, what the company chose and the reason it gave, what it committed, and what happened at one, three and five years. Every fact is cited to its source, and where we offer a judgment, it is labeled as one. Across the 9 cases, which span 1962 to 2020, 8 carry dated outcomes; 7 of the decisions held, 1 were reversed, 0 held in part, and 1 are still too early to call.
Why it is worth your time
Following one company across every kind of decision it faced shows you something a single case never can: how its choices compounded. The IBM Casebook covers 7 decision types, from The Counterfactual, The Turnaround, The Fork and more, with forks between 1962 and 2020, so you can see the pattern in how IBM sized its bets, when it reversed, what it committed, and what came back. Each record carries the same fields and every source, which is what lets you compare a pricing move with an acquisition and a crisis response on equal terms.
Who reaches for it
Anyone competing with IBM, selling to it, investing in it, or learning from it: strategy teams sizing up a rival, consultants building a company profile that goes beyond the annual report, investors who want the decisions behind the numbers, and faculty who teach the company as a case.
What it saves you
Assembling comparable precedents by hand is slow work: find each decision, date it, read the filings and the coverage, pull out the same fields, and check every number. At three to four hours a record, this set is roughly 32 hours of a strategist's time. It is $299, once, and every record has already been through the same fields and the same checks.
How people use it
In the memo, you cite the records that match your question, outcomes and sources included, straight from the Word appendix. In the room, the PowerPoint gives you one record per slide with an action title and a source line. In the model, you sort the Excel by verdict, horizon or capital committed. And in your AI workspace, you load the JSON as vetted context, so the assistant reasons from verified cases instead of inventing them.
What is in the download
A sample case
One case, free, exactly as it appears in the files. The other 8 verified cases are in the purchased files.
| Company | Fork date | The fork | Options | Choice | Stated rationale | What happened | The market | Judgment analyst | Sources |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IBM Read the story → verified | 1962-01-04 | Whether to replace incompatible product lines with a single compatible family of computers |
| Unify into one family | IBM needed one compatible family so customers could grow without throwing away programs and training | 5 years · 1982 share of gross income from System/360 descendants: more than half of the company's gross income | Not listed, or before its listing | reversibility low verdict held | History of Computer Communications (citing Fortune, October 1966) (2016); IBM Corporate History / IBM Archives (2024); Computer History Museum (1962); History of Information (citing Bob O. Evans, Annals of the History of Computing, 1983) (2012); Wikipedia / IBM System/360 (2026) |
What is in this casebook
9 verified cases across 7 decision types: The Counterfactual, The Turnaround, The Fork, The Cross-Subsidy, Adjacency Expansion, Cannibalization Choice and The Fall.
Questions
- What do I get in the IBM Casebook?
- 9 verified Decision Cases on IBM across 7 decision types. Each one tells you when the fork came, what was on the table, what the company chose and why, what it committed, and what happened at one, three and five years, with every source named, as Excel, JSON, PowerPoint, Word and PDF.
- How do I know the cases are accurate?
- Every case is drawn only from the story it comes from and that story's sources. Every fact carries a citation and a verbatim excerpt, a mechanical check rejects anything the story does not contain, a second model from a different vendor reads the record against the story, and a third arbitrates any disagreement. Only records that pass all of it are in the files.
- Is this a subscription?
- No. It is a one-time purchase, re-issued whenever a story a case rests on changes. The library license keeps every casebook current for a flat annual fee.