Bet the Company

Every case here actually happened, and none of them closes cleanly: a utility that bet itself on wind just before the cost of money doubled; a phone giant that prototyped its own killer; a film company whose every annual decision was rational and whose sum was ruin; a toy maker rescued by subtraction; a video chain that fought back, briefly won, and was stopped by its own shareholders. Alongside them: four short cases about trusting AI at work, from a consultancy report with invented sources to a company that hired its people back; a fraud with no order behind it, a champion its own regulator defended, ten days of world shipping run on paper, a $47bn story meeting its own prospectus, the hardest case in modern aviation, a founder who invented a fifth exit, and a company repriced for merely succeeding. And five comebacks, told just as honestly: a recall that became a legend, a computer company ninety days from empty, bankrupt heroes who conquered cinema, a culture reset worth trillions, and a buyer that let itself be changed by what it bought. And two famous tools put to the test: four boxes drawn in Boston in 1970, and the company that runs their purest version; and the patent cliff that emptied Prozac’s tills in 2001, now arriving for AI every few months. And one case about competing with a whole economy: China, the world’s workshop, now inventing too. And the big bets: companies that staked billions on a future nobody can prove yet — Intel’s plan to make chips for everyone, OpenAI’s trillion-dollar wager that bigger AI will pay for itself, and Rivian’s attempt to become the next Tesla. These are the stories boards actually argue about — told properly, without the punchlines.

Each case is a 50-minute C1 lesson: the real vocabulary of the case, the story in three parts with the numbers kept honest, one executive grammar focus — hedging, deduction, causation, conditionals, concession — and timed speaking tasks in the four registers leaders actually use: the board, the market, the workforce and the press. The Going Deeper tab always argues at least two readings; the lesson never announces a moral. Every case has an easier version too — the same real story at A2/B1, with short sentences, ten key words, click-through comprehension checks and one clear grammar point, linked under each card below.