2025 John Molson Business Ownership Case Writing Competition

The John Molson School of Business’ Bob and Raye Briscoe Centre in Business Ownership Studies is pleased to invite case writers to submit new, unpublished teaching cases under the theme of business ownership.

Business ownership cases may come from any business discipline, though the case focus must be from the perspective of the business owner as the active manager of the enterprise who is addressing the challenge. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, acquiring or divesting a business, inter-generational ownership and/or transition, valuation, liquidity, governance, strategic growth and/or reorientation, etc. The key point is that the case focus explores and addresses issues from the business owner’s perspective.

Cases will be published by Ivey Publishing as part of the Ivey-Concordia John Molson case collection. The John Molson Case Publications initiative was founded to support the development of new teaching case studies as part of the School's commitment to the case method. See the growing library of cases published as part of the Ivey/John Molson School collection.

Prizes (all amounts are in CAD)

• First place - $5,000
• Second place - $3,000
• Third place - $2,000

Authors may be professors, teachers, research assistants or students of any business-related area. Multiple authors may submit a case as a team. Authors may submit multiple cases.

We strongly suggest reading recent winning cases in order to better understand the types of submissions we favour. 

In connection with business ownership, the 2025 competition particularly encourages the submission of short cases (five to eight pages final print) exploring contemporary challenges such as:

• Sustainability: tackling climate change and its impacts, UN’s sustainable development goals
• Inter-generational workforce issues: working with Gen Z, getting ready for Gen Alpha, welcoming back-to-work Baby Boomers, re(engaging) Gens X and Y
• EDI 2.0: strategically leveraging the full benefits of and investments in EDI
• Competitiveness and innovation: new product design and introduction, digital transformation (e.g., AI and new technologies), government legislations and/or regulations, operational challenges arising from post-pandemic shifts in market conditions or global/local supply chains, new financing models and opportunities, governance models
• Social entrepreneurship: aligning profits with the great good
• Urban-rural divide: opportunities and challenges from the increasing urban-rural polarization

Submitted cases must:

• Be in English
• Be unpublished and written within a year of the submission deadline
• Be based on field research or secondary sources, and describe a recent real challenge in a real organization
• Relate to the theme of business ownership
• Include a case which is a maximum of 15 pages of narrative (double-spaced, 11-pt font, Times New Roman) and no more than 30 pages in total, including all appendices (case text is not permitted in appendices)
• Include a complete teaching note (double-spaced, 11-pt font, Times New Roman, no more than 20 pages in total)
• Be submitted with no indication of the authors’ and/or institution’s names in the case or note

Internal Concordia University John Molson School of Business submissions: Please submit your original, unpublished case, your teaching note and the completed case release form before 11:59 p.m. EST, June 2, 2025 by logging into your Concordia MS 365 account and filling out this form.

If you are not a Concordia faculty member, you must submit your materials by email as attachments, plus the PDFs below to cases.jmsb@concordia.ca.

If you have any questions, please contact Jordan LeBel, director, John Molson Case Publications, by email at jordan.lebel@concordia.ca.

NOTE: You may use Ivey’s case consent form instead of this form.

Prizes will be awarded to authors once their case has been accepted through Ivey Publishing’s review and editorial process and published as part of the Ivey-Concordia John Molson case collection. If needed, cases may be further developed in partnership with John Molson faculty co-authors. Author royalties will be managed through Ivey.