ecch - the case for learning



	ecch what is ecch? ecch services Introduction List of ecch services New customers For educational faculty For educational admin staff For developing world For corporate trainers For corporate researchers For students ecch locations Introduction Cranfield office Babson office staff Introduction Cranfield office Babson office Job opportunities membership Introduction About ecch membership Application form Privileges governance Introduction Cranfield office Babson office history director's blog

Jeffrey A. Gray

5 January 1942 - 24 June 2007

Jeff's legacy to management education
Personal tribute from ecch staff
Tributes

Jeff's legacy to management education

When Jeff Gray, Director of ecch, unexpectedly died on 24 June 2007, he left a lasting legacy to management educators worldwide in the resource that is ecch today: the largest independent supplier of case study and related materials in the world. Jeff joined the then Case Clearing House of Great Britain and Ireland in 1979 and over the subsequent 28 years oversaw its growth into the European Case Clearing House, then rebranded ecch, a non-profit, membership based organisation, with global reach, a dedicated team of 27 staff and an annual turnover in excess of £2.8 million.

Having begun his career as an engineer with Rolls-Royce, it was Jeff's MBA at Cranfield University in 1972 that gave him a passion for the case method of learning, first developed at Harvard University at the beginning of the 20th century. Throughout his years at ecch he built close and trusting working relationships with all the world's major case producing schools including: Harvard Business School, Darden School of Business, Richard Ivey School of Business, INSEAD, IMD and IESE and with many smaller case producing business schools and individuals worldwide who write cases. In the year ending March 2007, ecch had sold in excess of 820,000 case copies worldwide.

Through a total commitment to customer service, the development of user-friendly, on-line technology, always incorporating the most up-to-date solutions available, and a catalogue, now numbering more than 50,000 items, ecch enabled these cases, teaching notes, associated articles, data and audio visual materials to be easily accessed by an ever growing audience of teachers and corporate trainers worldwide. ecch awarded author royalties to case producers who were, in Jeff's view, so central to management education, but not recognised by any formal academic evaluation. In 1991, he also created the annual European Case Awards to further recognise those European business schools and case authors that had produced the most successful cases in the preceding year. He additionally created the Philip Law Scholarships to enable research students to write cases.

Indeed, it was Jeff's mission to spread the case method, not just deeper into the US and Europe, where it was being increasingly adopted, but further afield. Over the years, more than 1,500 case authors and instructors have attended ecch case writing and teaching workshops worldwide. In 2003, with the agreement of the major case producing business schools, ecch launched CPP, a concessionary pricing programme for teachers of management and business in developing countries to access and use the highest quality case teaching materials the world could offer, but which they could otherwise not have afforded. CPP also awarded scholarships to participants from the developing world to attend special ecch case teaching workshops to help instructors and faculty with their particular needs in their classrooms.

Jeff also recognised the role of students in successful case classes and created the biennial European Business Schools Case Challenge at which teams from the top 16 European case using business schools compete in solving a case specially commissioned by ecch for the event.