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The venerable business case study method got its start in 1921 at the Harvard Business School. The method became standard at the school throughout the 1920s and since then Harvard has a near-monopoly grip on the business, selling its cases to over 4,000 rival schools. Cases can be useful and informative, but recognize that they arent reality. The companies featured typically require that the case writer submit the case to them for approval. That introduces survivor biaswhoever is still around at the time of publication gets to dictate how the narrative is told. Another issue is that the companies selected and held up as exemplars are subject to the halo effect. This is the tendency to believe that because a company was successful, copying its practices will create success elsewhere. Unfortunately, the iron law of transient advantage is hard to escape. The 1995 Dell case doesnt hold up so well. A 2002 case about Nokia centered on how the successful phone company was going to deal with the 8 billion in cash piling up in its accounts. And dont even get me started on the 618 (!) cases that feature the General Electric Corporation. Which brings me to the decades of adulation long accorded to Southwest Airlines. The Shortest Distance to Just Another Airline Southwest Airlines ran a Super Bowl ad this year. In it, passengers scramble through a jungle, climbing over each other in a chaotic race to grab seats. The tagline? “That was wild. Assigned seating is here.” The ad was intended (I think) to indulge in gentle mockery of the past. I found it jarring. Herb Kelleher, the airlines colorful co-founder, would have been horrified, I think. I last met with him (over a Wild Turkey bourbon, of course) at the Strategic Management Society Meetings in 2004 and he was adamantemployees first, deep attention to details, and most importantly, fun! The many (348!) cases, book chapters, and textbook references to Southwest reference its tightly integrated strategy where every element reinforced every other, allowing it to be profitable in a notoriously tough business. A Boeing 737-2H4 in Southwest livery, ca. 1977. [Photo: Museum of Flight/CORBIS/Corbis/Getty Images] Kellehers insight was that there was a particular kind of flyer whose other option was driving, so short flights that replaced a 4-5 hour drive were attractive. That meant you didnt have to offer meals. One aircraft type (Boeing 737s) meant simplified maintenance, training, and scheduling. Open seating enabled 20-minute turnarounds instead of competitors’ 35 minutes. That extra utilization squeezed more flights from every plane. Bags fly free meant fewer delays at check-in and faster boarding. Employees came first and everybody pitched in. Pilots helped clean cabins, gate agents jumped in wherever needed. And even with all that, the companys culture of having fun at work made the operational discipline feel human rather than mechanical. One of my favorite examples is a flight attendant rapping the entire safety briefing to the tune of Ice, Ice, Baby. Or this one, safety with a sprinkling of humor. The takeaway The big teaching point from the Southwest cases is that competitive advantage isn’t about any single policy. It’s about the fit between policies. Remove one piece and the whole system weakens. Southwest has now removed all of them. Assigned seating went into effect January 27th. “Bags fly free” ended in May 2025. The company is adding premium extra-legroom sections and tiered fare bundles. They’ve announced redeye flights and partnerships with Icelandair. They’ve conducted the first layoffs in their 53-year history. At least they are honesttheir COO explained the bag fee reversal with refreshing candor: “We need more revenue to cover our costs.” Activist investors at Elliott Management got what they wanted. But what exactly has Southwest become? As one former loyalist put it: “There’s simply no reason to fly Southwest anymore. Southwest’s leadership cited research showing “8 out of 10 customers prefer assigned seating.” They also acknowledged that after fare and schedule, bags fly free was cited as the #1 reason customers choose Southwest. The problem is that when you remove that differentiator, you’re now competing on fare and schedule against Delta, United, and American, carriers with better route networks, international reach, premium cabins, and decades more experience operating their models. Like all the other airlines, we are likely to now see pitched battles for overhead space, another blow to a business model built on fast airport turnarounds. The Super Bowl ad could be a case study in strategic confusion. Southwest is making fun of customers who were passionately loyal to what made Southwest diffeent, while asking those same customers to believe the company’s “legendary hospitality” somehow exists independent of the operational system that enabled it. Take lessons from case studies with caution There’s a deeper lesson here. Case studies are snapshots. They capture what worked at a particular moment, under particular boundary conditions. What they dont speak to is what to do when those conditions shift. Southwest’s open seating made sense for the short-hop flights taken by their initial core customers. When the alternative was expensive legacy carriers, those customers would have been driving were it not for Southwest. By 2024, travelers had options that didn’t exist in 1971 or 1991 or even 2011. JetBlue offered assigned seats with personality. Spirit and Frontier offered unbundled ultra-low fares. Delta went upmarket with better service. The white space Southwest once occupied got crowded. My friends Zeynep Ton and Frances Frei exchanged concerns for the culture of the airline. Frei, a professor at Harvard Business School, captured this concern: “I sure hope this isn’t a case of activist investors coming in and insisting on a set of decisions that they won’t be around to have to endure. Great organizations get built over time. It doesn’t take very long to ruin an organization.” I’m not arguing Southwest should have frozen in amber forever. Markets change. Customer preferences evolve. Even the most elegant strategy eventually needs updating. But there’s a difference between thoughtful evolution and abandoning your model. Herb Kelleher once said humility and discipline go together: “You can’t really be disciplined in what you do unless you are humble and open-minded.” He built an airline that knew exactly what it was, knew exactly who it served, and had the discipline to say no to opportunities that didn’t fit. Southwest’s new leadership knows what investors want. Whether they know what Southwest is anymorethat’s less clear.
Category:
E-Commerce
Is it lawful to call boneless chicken wings ‘wings’? According to a U.S. District Judge, yes. On Tuesday in Illinois, Judge John Tharp reached a verdict in a case brought against Buffalo Wild Wings alleging that the wings aren’t wings and shouldn’t be referred to as such on the restaurant chain’s menu. The suit, which was first brought by customer Aimen Halim in March 2023, claimed the business had violated the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act by referring to the product as “boneless wings” instead of something the plaintiff deemed more fitting, such as “chicken nuggets. In the end, the judge didn’t feel the case had any bones. In a 10-page ruling, Tharp wrote, Boneless wings are not a niche product for which a consumer would need to do extensive research to figure out the truth. Instead, ‘boneless wings’ is a common term that has existed for over two decades.” Tharp continued, asserting that the plaintiff didn’t have enough solid evidence to prove Buffalo Wild Wings was at fault. Halim did not ‘drum’ up enough factual allegations to state a claim. Though he has standing to bring the claim because he plausibly alleged economic injury, he does not plausibly allege that reasonable consumers are fooled by Buffalo Wild Wings’ use of the term ‘boneless wings.'” The judge also cited a 2024 Supreme Court case, which also involved boneless wings at a different establishment in Ohio. In that case, the plaintiff was allegedly injured by a bone from a so-called “boneless wing” getting lodged in his throat. However, the court ruled that under Ohio law, a reasonable consumer could have reasonably anticipated and guarded against the bone at issue”, regardless of it being called “boneless.” Judge Tharp wrote, “As the Ohio Supreme Court recently put it, ‘[a] diner reading boneless wings on a menu would no more believe that the restaurant was warranting the absence of bones in the items than believe that the items were made from chicken wings, just as a person eating chicken fingers would know that he had not been served fingers.” Now, Buffalo Wild Wings is celebrating the case’s dismissal. In a social media post, the chain wrote, “Theyre called boneless wings and will forever be called boneless wings. Celebrate the courts decision today with BOGO FREE boneless wings.” According to the chain’s website, the BOGO deal happens every Thursday. Regardless of the fact that the lawsuit has been tossed, the conversation about whether boneless wings are wings is still popping off. Commenters on Buffalo Wild Wing’s celebratory post ranged from pure disgust with the verdict to fierce defense of both the chain and of boneless wings. “This makes me never want to go to BWW,” one user wrote. “They arent ‘Buffalo wings’, theyre just wings AND your ‘boneless wings’ are chicken tenders. Cmon man.” Others called the wings “grown up chicken nuggets” or simply vented that the chain’s wings are subpar in general. On the contrary, some commenters expressed their enthusiasm for the menu item. “Boneless wings are the only wings that should be consumed,” wrote another X user on the post. While the judge made his ruling, he also said that the plaintiff can amend his initial complaint by March 20. Halim will have the opportunity to “provide additional facts about his experience that would demonstrate that BWW is committing a deceptive act.”
Category:
E-Commerce
Walgreens will lay off hundreds of employees as the pharmacy chain continues to struggle with increased competition and higher-than-desired costs. On top of this, the newly private company is expected to close at least another few dozen retail stores in 2026. Heres what you need to know. Whats happened? Walgreens has announced that it will cut at least 628 jobs across two states, according to communications it sent to the states in question earlier this month. A Walgreens spokesperson confirmed the layoffs with Fast Company when reached for comment. News of the layoffs was first reported by Bloomberg. The job cuts include 469 positions in the companys home state of Illinois and 159 jobs in Texas, where the company is shuttering a distribution center. Were focused on becoming Americas best retail pharmacy, beginning with improving the instore experience for our customers and patients,” Walgreens said in a statement to Fast Company. “To do this, weve made the difficult decision to simplify our organization in both the support center and with our field leadership to speed decision making and improve the service that millions of customers rely on every day.” “We have deep respect for our colleagues and greatly appreciate their contributions and are committed to supporting them throughout this transition,” the spokesperson added. Walgreens has been closing stores In addition to the layoffs, Walgreens also reportedly confirmed that it will be closing dozens of stores in 2026. While no exact numbers were given, Bloomberg says the pharmacy chain confirmed that the number of closing locations would be fewer than 100, which is less than previously planned. Walgreens said in 2024 that it had targeted 1,200 stores for closure by 2027. Walgreens will also reportedly open four new locations this year. Pharmacy chains have struggled in recent years Last August, Walgreens went private when the private equity firm Sycamore Partners purchased the company for roughly $10 billion. The move marked the end of the iconic pharmacy chains nearly century-long reign as a publicly traded company. For years before the deal, Walgreens, like other pharmacy chains, had struggled with increased online competition from the likes of Amazon and falling foot traffic that was exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Pharmacy chains have also struggled with rising costs and increasing debts. These factors contributed to competitor Rite Aids bankruptcy in 2025 and led to a wave of pharmacy layoffs over the past few years, including at CVS. According to the company’s website, Walgreens currently has around 8,000 locations in the United States and Puerto Rico and employs around 211,000 workers.
Category:
E-Commerce
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