About Us
Here you'll find our Purpose, a brief synopsis of our History, a little bit about our Founder, and our chosen Medium (carefully-selected business case studies).
 
Our Purpose
Case Lighthouse is the world’s leading expert in selection, design, and facilitation of business case studies (from 60 of the world's leading case-producing business schools) to illuminate, navigate, and accelerate corporate development, business development, economic development, and talent development challenges facing client companies and their leadership teams. 
 
Our Vision    The Right Case, on the Right Problem, at the Right Time, with the Right
                           Team, in the Right Place
 

Our Mission  Our mission is to leverage the case method to accelerate desired

                            changes within client companies in partnership with the owner,

                            entrepreneur, and/or change agents leading the change.

 
Helping Clients Illuminate, Navigate, and Accelerate Change
Our History - Discovering Unique Approach 
While attending Harvard Business School's MBA program, our Founder read, analyzed, and prepared action plans for nearly 1,000 HBS business case studies. Unlike his classmates though, he knew he was headed back to work for the same company he had left to attend HBS.
 
As a result of this difference, of the 1,000 cases he analyzed, he realized that only 10 to 15 were ideally suited (i.e. the "Right Problem") for his company’s pressing change challenges.  By engaging his CEO in reviewing, discussing, applying these "Right Case" studies, and then immediately acting upon the intuitive leaps that resulted from getting the CEO into a state of "informed readiness", the company made enormous leaps in performance and growth by overcoming the problems restricting it.   
 
Through this experience, our Founder realized that careful case selection made all the difference in the world.  With thorough and careful case selection, the "Right Cases"  were most powerful in the hands of the practicing owners, entrepreneurs, and change agents whom they were selected for (not student backpacks).  That's because--as he had experiened--the "Right Case on the Right Problem"  immediately...and profoundly...impacts the direction and performance of the company AND simultaneuously  accelerates judgment development for the management team members involved. 
 
Mr. Mahoney went on to experiment within several more companies in a senior Corporate Development role in this same way.   In each company, through careful selection of case studies (Right Cases), and then engaging the key parties (Right Team) involved in driving a desired change (Right Problem) in a repeated process (Right Time) of discussing and applying the chosen case studies (Right Place), each team was able to realize their change initiative with record speed and effectiveness.  Worked every time--but selection was absolutely key. 
 
Since then, Case Lighthouse was formed and this process has been refined and perfected to yield similar results for client after client.  
Our Founder 
Mr. Mahoney is the lead Corporate Change Agent for Case Lighthouse, LLC.

Prescribing from a library of over 60,000 ‘REAL-LIFE’ business case studies carefully documented by the world’s leading business schools, Mr. Mahoney helps client’s illuminate strategic direction, navigate difficult change efforts, and accelerate change and change agent development through selection, design and facilitation of problem-focused case-based solutions.

Prior to founding Just In CASE, Mr. Mahoney drove the M&A function for Colorado’s 2nd largest public company—growing the company from $4 to 9 billion in assets through 25 successful acquisitions. A successful serial entrepreneur, Mr. Mahoney has founded (or co-founded) 9 companies--routinely enhancing the harvest for his work through equity positions. Mr. Mahoney’s corporate development work includes both organic and M&A-driven growth, new services innovation, corporate venturing/spin-offs, geographic expansions, HIPOT talent development, turnarounds/buyouts, off-shoring commoditized services, prep/sale of divisions/companies, change of leadership, and start-ups.

An acclaimed strategist, corporate development specialist, and corporate change agent, Mr. Mahoney’s realm is navigating clients through high-growth and high-change environments. His talent in revitalizing companies and accelerating desired change has been proven in the toughest economic conditions and the most demanding industries. While conversant and experienced in each functional area, his specialty lies in leading/facilitating/apprenticing cross-functional change efforts/agents. A gifted communicator, Mr. Mahoney has nearly 20 years experience as a case author for Harvard Business School, best-practices content contributor to the Corporate Strategy Board, case discussion facilitator, coach, and speaker.
 
 
 
Our Medium - Case Studies

Case Studies are developed by and for the world’s leading business schools such as Harvard, Stanford, INSEAD, Darden, Ivey, IESE, and IMD. Each case profiles a real-life entrepreneur, owner or change agent (some you’ll recognize) in the midst of the hard-core realities of failure, survival and/or growing their company—the good, the bad, and the ugly of their situation, their own decision-making and consequences. Over 60,000 of these case studies have been developed to be used—until now—exclusively in the MBA and Executive Education programs of these leading business schools and other business schools across the nation and world (in Colorado - University of Denver, University of Colorado, Colorado State University). 

 

As a former Research Associate/Case Author for Harvard Business School, our Founder knows first-hand the effort and investment that goes into developing a case study of this caliber (i.e. world-class and used by business schools worldwide for MBA and Executive Education courses).  On average, two months of research and editing, and $50,000 to $100,000 per case is invested by a leading business school to underwrite the Research Associate/Case Author's efforts and to access world-class supporting information sources (high-end market research reports, etc). These investments are essential to place the Research Associate/Case Author in midst of the company being profiled in order to obtain first-hand accounts, discern/capture nuances and internal politics, secure source documents actually used during the situation profiled (and often fundamental to truly understanding the analysis and/or approach taken or considered), and most importantly, direct interviews with every key participant.  These interviews, and the good, bad, and ugly they illuminate, are absolutely unequaled (relative to any other published source) in their candor, insightfulness, and management development 'nutrition' value. 

 

"Right Time, Right Team, Right Place"...
In practice, serving hundreds of management teams in hundreds of change challenges, our Founder came to realize that traditional Executive Education programs fail participant companies in four key ways:  1) The case studies used in Executive Ed programs are selected LONG BEFORE (usually years before) the participants sign up--so it's about a 99 in 100 chance that the case studies used will the "WRONG CASE" to directly guide the participant's company (and Executive Ed courses usually have only 15 to 30 case studies to choose from anyway); 2) traditional Executive Ed programs are at the "WRONG TIME" (i.e. the business school's schedule--not the schedule dictated by the client's pressing problem); 3) traditional Executive Ed courses are held in the "WRONG PLACE" (i.e. on the business school's campus instead of at at the company's location); and finally 4) traditional Executive Ed courses include the "WRONG TEAM" (i.e. only one executive (not a team) can afford the course fee and travel costs instead of the full management team participating.  

 

"The Key to Transferring Judgment...and Making it Actionable by Recipients"

And case studies allow Case Lighthouse to go beyond traditional peer-advisory boards by leveraging the lessons-learned and best-practices contained in case studies selected specifically for a client's most immediate and difficult problem.  Furthermore, in traditional board meetings, board member's can't possibly convey their related experience in the depth and detail of a professionally researched and written case study, so recipient's of their advice often miss the nuances of applying the advice to their situation.  With the Right Case on the Right Problem, the Case study provides the depth and detail (and has been read and so is known by both board member and recipient) that allows the board member to relate their advice (and underlying experiences in full depth and detail) by delivering both through the case detail discussion and application of the case learnings to the recipient's problem.  Therein lies the secret that has made the case method the undisputed champion in transferring judgment between participants.