When Yale SOM Created the ‘Raw’ Case Study

The Historian’s Notebook: 50 Years of Business & Society is a blog series created in preparation for the 50th anniversary of Yale SOM in September 2026. The series is written by Yale SOM’s resident historian, Michelle Spinelli. Reach out if you have an idea for a blog post, memories or photos to share, or an inquiry about SOM history.

During the winter of 2007, William Goetzmann ’86, now the Edwin J. Beinecke Professor of Finance and Management Studies and Faculty Director of the International Center for Finance at Yale SOM, watched as one of the largest and most dramatic leveraged buyouts in United States history unfolded. Blackstone Group, a private equity firm founded by Wall Street titans Peter G. Peterson and Stephen A. Schwarzman, bought out Sam Zell’s Equity Office Partners Trust (EOP), a real estate investment trust (REIT), for an astronomical $39 billion following a dramatic bidding war between Blackstone and Vornado Realty Trust.

In the buyout story, which was replete with larger-than-life personalities, Goetzmann saw a golden opportunity for teaching and perfect fodder for a case study at SOM. He immediately called up Zell, who agreed that—once the deal was complete—it would make a terrific case. What Goetzmann didn’t realize was that this material would yield the first “raw” case study in business education, and that its web-based format would dovetail perfectly with the school’s integrated core curriculum, launched just a few months prior.

The EOP buyout thrust two powerful investment vehicles into the spotlight: REITs and private equity. Zell, who had dubbed himself “Sam the Grave Dancer,” had made a fortune investing in distressed properties that others had overlooked. A veteran financier, he was a strong advocate for REITs as a corporate form for investing in real estate. For its part, Blackstone saw a bargain opportunity in the historically undervalued EOP. At the time of the buyout, EOP owned some 590 buildings and more than 105 million square feet of office space in major metropolitan markets.

Blackstone offered Zell a “Godfather price” to acquire EOP. But just as the deal was about to go down, Vornado threw in a higher price, triggering a weeks-long bidding war. This “auction,” which kept driving up the price, was just what Zell had wanted. In the end, Blackstone prevailed, and the publicly-held EOP became privately-owned.

Goetzmann knew that a case study of the EOP buyout would provide students with an excellent opportunity for thinking about the value of REITs. The fact that it was happening in real time made it even more exciting. The problem was that writing a case study about events that were still unfolding would be novel and challenging. Nevertheless, Goetzmann approached Jaan Elias, SOM’s first director of case study research, and Stanley Garstka, then the school’s deputy dean, to see if there was a way to make it work.

Together, the three devised a groundbreaking solution: Elias would gather up all the available information on the buyout and upload it to the web for students to access with only a limited narrative. Along with the details of the case and media coverage, he added video content and links to other resources, including government documents and even Google maps that identified EOP’s real estate. Generous, in-depth interviews with Zell and Schwarzman made the case come alive.

The breadth of data made available by the web format created an unforeseen multidimensionality to the case. No longer was the case solely concerned with the value of REITs. Now it served as a prompt for analyses of asset valuation, private equity, real estate, and investment strategy. Interviews with Zell and Schwarzman also allowed students to appreciate radically different management styles, adding an organizational behavior layer to the case, and the maps allowed for a more comprehensive understanding of the geography in question. In order to prioritize and synthesize a large amount of data across sectors, students were forced to view the case from multiple perspectives, simulating the real-life decision-making process.

To differentiate the web-based format pioneered at SOM from the standard “cooked” case style, Elias came up with the term “raw.” Cooked cases center around a written narrative that summarizes a past management dilemma accompanied by pre-selected data. They are typically no more than 15 pages. Unlike with raw case studies, they don’t require students to sift through data on their own. While the EOP buyout case was made available only to Yale students, subsequent raw case studies developed at SOM have been widely distributed.

SOM’s web-based raw case study turned out to be a perfect fit for supporting the school’s new integrated core curriculum, which replaced traditional disciplinary courses such as finance and marketing with multidisciplinary, team-taught courses structured around what managers could expect to find in real-world situations. The first brochure describing the new curriculum noted that it would require “the development of entirely new pedagogical material, including multimedia material, especially video and simulations.” The first raw case—though its origin was serendipitous rather than planned—fulfilled this expectation.