I was fortunate a year or so ago to work with one of the world’s leading football clubs. A manager working for the club had read about some of my research and invited me to the stadium to talk about how we might work together. We covered in some depth an aspect of their commercial strategy and the exchange led to one of their senior officials visiting my university. This was good PR for the club: the presentation attracted a large number of academics, students and practitioners. My relationship with the club continues, to the extent that I have now written a case study of the organisation for a forthcoming book.

Although to some this may seem like a brief and tenuous encounter, I view the exchange as important for a number of reasons. First, I was extremely grateful to the organisation for approaching me in the first instance and then for involving me in their work. In academia such opportunities are few and far between, particularly in sports marketing and sponsorship. As a university professor, I consider engaging with the practitioner community very important – business schools are there to do precisely that. However, despite my best efforts, I am often rebuffed in my attempts to recruit guest speakers or managers who might work on joint research. This can be very frustrating, because the job of a business academic is to study, understand and explain what is happening in the real (business) world. Yet we are so often denied the chance to engage at a level that reflects our understanding and our expertise.

Which leads me to my second point: how academics and practitioners both benefit by working together. For academics, the answer is simple: we gain real-life experiences that add value to our research and our interactions with students. Academic work is also assessed in more depth than it once was: to gain promotion, acquire status or generate funding, academics must demonstrate the relevance of their work. As for practitioners, far be it from me to explain the general benefits, but I can point to two specific gains. Working with academics provides access to students, many of whom are bright and can make valuable contributions to the work of commercial businesses and clubs. Companies also get the opportunity to work with people who have time and space to think and create without the pressures associated with financial turnover.

An open, collaborative approach to relations between academia and practice would therefore appear to be a good thing for all concerned. Business needs creative thinkers and problem-solvers; academia needs contact with the outside world in order to stay focused and relevant.

With such matters in mind, this issue of the Journal is a special edition in which academics are given the chance to demonstrate their understanding of real world cases.

Practitioners take note: in the world’s leading business schools, case study work forms the basis for many of the most challenging MBA programmes. Case studies are seen as a valuable tool for marrying academic understanding with the challenges and practicalities of business.

The Economist’s global Top-100 MBAs voted IESE in Madrid best in 2006 and 2007. It seems entirely appropriate, therefore, to invite an academic from this institution to explain the role and importance of case study analysis. Carlos Martí Sanchis from the IESE Centre for Sport Business Management introduces this special edition with a commentary that I hope will encourage practitioners to pick up the phone. Let the crossover of ideas commence!

Simon Chadwick