11 Crucial Lessons Everyone Learns In Business School

Flickr/Betsy WeberManagement professor Clay Christensen teaches a class at Harvard Business School.

MBA students at top-tier business schools learn the critical accounting, marketing, and management skills required to run a successful business.

One of the main ways they learn these skills is through case studies, a teaching method borrowed from the sciences and first applied to corporate analysis by Harvard Business School.

Students are presented with some of the most difficult business situations in corporate history and then discuss how a company either triumphed spectacularly or failed miserably.

We asked several professors from top business schools - including Laurence Capron of INSEAD, Tim Vogus of Vanderbilt University, Aaron Chatterji of Duke University, and Gautam Ahuja of the University of Michigan - to share the most important case studies they teach their students. We've highlighted the main takeaway from each.