ICFAI Business School case “Microsoft: Building a Collaborative Work Culture to Foster Innovation” authored by Prof Jitesh Nair and Prof Balaswamy Pasala emerged as the winner in the “Human Resource Management/Organisational Behavioural” category in The Case Centre Awards 2022. The UK-based The Case Centre (TCC) is the independent home of the case method and its awards celebrate worldwide excellence in case teaching and writing.

This is Prof Jitesh and Prof Balaswamy’s first Case Award, while it’s the fifth win in this category for ICFAI Business School, according to The Case Centre.

Winning case study

The case discusses various initiatives taken by Microsoft, the market leader in the desktop computing market, to reinvent its culture of innovation after it lost market share to companies like Apple and Google that surged ahead in the market with innovative products. As part of a new approach, Microsoft blended insights from behavioural science to develop processes like ‘Connects’, a real-time feedback mechanism that helped employees move away from competitive work culture to a collaborative one and a ‘perspectives tool’ to further promote organisational health.

Richard McCracken, Director of The Case Centre said, “A new generation of brilliant business and management graduates will be required to help economies and businesses across the world to regroup and thrive after the pandemic. These Awards and Competitions, with winners from Asia, Europe, and North America, shine a light on where and by whom some of this expertise is being nurtured — often by new talent.” Nanyang Business School is the only other category winner from Asia apart from ICFAI Business School. Some of the other category winners are from INSEAD, HEC Paris, IMD, and Babson.

Prof Jitesh and Prof Balaswamy expressed their joy on receipt of the award. “It is a great sense of pride and brings immense satisfaction to know that our case has been well received and is being taught and discussed in business schools around the world.” They added that the case clearly underscores the need for leaders to consider business activities from the perspective of ‘human interactions’ and not purely ‘economic transactions’.