No. 7, January 2022.
The case involved the Guatemalan Sugar Association's decision to add Vitamin A to the product, a simple process that would save thousands of children with vitamin A deficiency. It was also inexpensive, but the project, promoted by the Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama (INCAP), was opposed by the Association's sugar companies.
The lead author of the case, James E. Austin, a former professor at INCAE with a joint tenured faculty appointment at Harvard's business and public health schools, who was researching food fortification programs, asked me what the hook of the case was.
I had no idea what he was talking about. But I knew that I had to dig deeper into the investigation of the case, with more interviews and a greater search for data on the sugar industry.
Among these statistics I found something interesting: although official international trade data showed very little import and export of sugar between Central American countries, the price of sugar on the domestic market was significantly higher in Honduras than in Guatemala, and both were well above the international price. Could there be "unofficial" exports from Guatemala to its neighbor?
Such smuggling would be very difficult to detect and even more difficult to prove, unless there were some clearly distinguishable characteristic between Guatemalan and Honduran sugar. A single annex was enough for the student observer to understand why there was opposition among the members of the Sugar Association to the Vitamin A fortification project.
There was the hook.
The project was finally approved, not because of the awakening of a great social sensitivity among sugar growers, but because of a leveling trend between domestic prices in the two neighboring countries.
I learned a lesson in writing the sugar case that has served me well in teaching: look for the hook, which can be defined as a dilemma that is not immediately apparent, that may be paradoxical, and when discovered, causes an "aha" feeling. It is defined by its centrality; it is the phenomenon upon which countless problems can be attributed.
Another example of the hook: the manager of a pharmaceutical company, whose policies allowed salespeople to adjust prices according to competitive conditions, urged them to increase sales over the previous year "no matter what."
When the year's results showed the lowest profits (as a percentage of sales) in the company's history, the manager attributed it to the lack of aggressiveness of the salespeople, some of whom were still active at 70 years of age. He introduced an incentive system that had the opposite effect of what he had intended, breaking the spirit of collaboration between sales divisions.
The manager did not pay attention to the economic opening implemented by the government and the entry of new competitors. The salesmen followed the same company policies, with totally predictable results.
The hook.
