The EFMD Case Writing Competition celebrates outstanding case writing and teaching since 1988. Over the years, it has brought together educators from around the world who are committed to making management education more relevant, rigorous, and impactful.

We continue our 2025 interview series by speaking with the authors behind the winning cases to learn more about their work, their motivation, and the stories behind their submissions.

We are pleased to feature Sophie Bacq, Valerie Keller-Birrer, and Ruth Kinyua, IMD, winners in the “African Business Cases” category.

The category “African Business Cases” is kindly sponsored by ESCA Ecole de Management. EFMD is grateful for their continued commitment to advancing case-based learning and supporting the Case Writing Competition.

‘The New Protein Buzz: Can Legendary Foods Africa Feed the World with Insects?’ 

1. Could you briefly introduce yourself and provide an overview of the case you have written?

My name is Sophie Bacq, and I am Professor of Social Entrepreneurship at IMD. Social entrepreneurship is the topic I chose 20 years ago when I started my PhD in 2006, and it has continued to fascinate me since then. We wrote the case as much about Legendary Foods Africa as about Shobhita Soor, a Canadian serial entrepreneur and visionary leader behind the startup. When I met her in Switzerland, I was immediately drawn to Shobhita’s ambition, in her own words, “to deliver the nutrition of meat at the price point and the sustainability of plants,” and her bold move to Accra, Ghana, without hesitation to make it happen.

I’m Valerie Keller-Birrer, a researcher at IMD. I help research and write many case studies, but Shobhita’s story caught my attention from the very beginning. What stood out wasn’t just the originality of her business idea, but Shobhita herself. Her determination, clarity of purpose, and commitment to creating positive change make her genuinely inspiring. Learning more about her journey was both enjoyable and motivating.

My name is Ruth Kinyua, and I co-authored the Legendary Foods case whilst completing my MBA at IMD. Prior to IMD, I established an independent advisory practice in Nairobi, Kenya, supporting founders and business leaders. Complementarily, I have served on the Alumni Advisory Board of Babson College since 2023, contributing to its global entrepreneurial community. Our research highlighted Shobhita’s entrepreneurial instinct to recognise the potential in a longstanding community food tradition and build a business around it that not only scales commercially but also creates opportunities for the very people who had preserved it.

2. Every case is built around a central tension that resists easy resolution. What is the tension at the heart of your case, and why does it matter?

Legendary Foods Africa is proposing a revolutionary innovation, a new source of food that is sustainable in many ways, from the core goal it addresses, which is to fight hunger, to the low carbon emissions linked to its production, to creating local jobs, and more. It has shown proof of concept and early stages of scalability. Yet Legendary Foods Africa faces a catch-22: Shobhita and her team need funding to further grow, but the large investors and agrifood companies best positioned to support them expect to see larger volumes before considering a formal partnership. The challenge? Legendary Foods Africa needs to grow by a factor of 200 if it wants to mainstream its social innovation.

3. What did writing this case reveal to you that you did not expect to find, and how has it influenced the way you think about your field?

The human actors are the ones who most surprised me (Sophie). I did not expect to learn so much about the impact women are having in this case. Not only Shobhita, who is a role model to many women entrepreneurs worldwide, but also the fact that most employees in the start-up are women. The fact that, when it comes to leadership challenges, it was not so much Shobhita’s gender that came into question, but her young age, in line with Ghana’s local cultural values.

In fact, we know so much about startups and entrepreneurship in Western contexts, often through models inspired by Silicon Valley, where the reality is quite unique, and often so different from those found elsewhere, including in Europe and North America. We therefore need more case studies that show the many facets of “doing entrepreneurship” in Latin American, Asian, and African contexts. One shall make no assumptions and truly learn from the voices of local leaders what it means to grow a business there. For instance, Shobhita, of Indian origin and educated in Canada, had to learn that the channels of communication and ways of giving or receiving feedback are very different in Ghana. Employees often had to be encouraged to speak up.

Another interesting insight was the wealth of indigenous knowledge systems behind this seemingly simple local food: how it was discovered, prepared, shared, and passed from one generation to the next.

Most impressive, however, was Shobhita’s entrepreneurial vision to recognise value that had always existed within the community but was largely overlooked by the market. The intricacies of bringing together the people, knowledge, and processes needed to transform that local know-how into a scalable business with global significance, as well as the iterations involved in creating a business model that ensured the social and economic benefits flowed back to the community that had preserved that knowledge for generations.

4. What broader themes or concepts in management does your case illuminate, and why are they important for students to engage with today?

The case is very versatile, encompassing themes such as scaling, social venturing, collaboration, geographical growth, product development, and capability building within informal economies.

The case challenges the assumption that innovation must begin with invention rather than repurposing a familiar idea: The food product itself already existed within the community.

Rather than viewing this as an opportunity to extract and commercialise externally, Shobhita’s approach was to build with the community. She brought together local actors, organised fragmented knowledge, introduced structure where needed, and connected the ecosystem to broader markets. This allowed the value to be amplified rather than displaced.

This raises important management questions around how value is created and distributed alongside key concepts such as ecosystem orchestration, inclusive value creation, and the role of intermediaries in bridging informal and formal economies.

It highlights the importance of trust, coordination, and system design in scaling ventures that are embedded in local contexts, showing how entrepreneurial success can come from strengthening what already exists, rather than replacing it.

For students today, this case is relevant in a world where growth opportunities lie in emerging markets and informal systems. The case invites a shift in mindset from seeing communities as passive contributors to recognising them as active holders of knowledge and co-creators of value.

5. If your case continues to be taught a decade from now, what do you believe it will say about the period in which it was written?

Clearly that we wrote the case in a period that was akin to “a fork in the road”: in 2025, there were so many important, exciting and, promising social innovations yet it was so difficult to convince mainstream actors to engage fully (often despite high interest and good intentions), as the social agenda remained at the margins, one that was convenient to have only when there was the social capital to support it. Our view is that the organisations of tomorrow are the ones that are future-oriented. When one looks into the future and sees the increasing prevalence of technology, the companies that will be winning in 2036 will be the ones that know how to manage people and care for their needs. Social innovation is the secret ingredient needed to counterbalance overpowering technology.

---

The Sponsor’s Commentary

The category “African Business Cases” is kindly judged by ESCA Ecole de Management. EFMD deeply appreciates the invaluable expertise and the dedicated efforts of ESCA Ecole de Management in supporting the Case Writing Competition.

1. Could you share a brief overview of your institution?

Founded in 1992, ESCA Ecole de Management is a leading business school located in the heart of Casablanca Finance City, in Casablanca, Morocco. With over three decades of experience, ESCA has firmly established itself as a benchmark institution for higher education in management in Morocco and French-speaking Africa.

In 2017, ESCA became the first Moroccan business school to receive official State recognition; in 2018, it was the first in Morocco and Francophone Africa to earn the prestigious AACSB accreditation—held by fewer than 5% of the world’s business schools. In 2025, ESCA reached another milestone as the first Moroccan institution to hold both AACSB and AMBA accreditations, placing it among the select 2% of the world’s best business schools.

Recognised Academic Excellence

Since its inception, ESCA has been committed to training students, managers, and leaders to become transformational change-makers. In 2025, the school was ranked #1 in Morocco and French-speaking Africa for the 14th consecutive year by the Eduniversal Ranking.

In the 2026 edition of the Top School in Morocco © Ranking published by Campus Mag and Diorh Consulting, ESCA was ranked in the Top Tier #1 of Private Management Schools in Morocco for the 3rd consecutive year, confirming its sustained academic excellence and strong professional reputation.

2. What qualities distinguish a truly great teaching case from a merely good one, in your view?

At ESCA Ecole de Management, we believe that management education is most powerful when it connects rigorous academic thinking with the realities faced by organisations and leaders. Sponsoring the African Case Studies category of the EFMD Case Writing Competition is a natural extension of this belief.

Case studies are among the most effective pedagogical tools for developing critical thinking, decision-making, and leadership capabilities. By supporting the creation and dissemination of high-quality African cases, we contribute to enriching the global pool of teaching materials with perspectives, challenges, and innovations that emerge from the African context.

Our sponsorship reflects a broader commitment to promoting knowledge production in and about Africa, encouraging educators and researchers to document local business realities, and ensuring that future managers can learn from cases that are both globally relevant and deeply rooted in regional contexts. We see this initiative as an investment in the quality, diversity, and relevance of management education worldwide.

3. Why is sponsoring a case writing competition a meaningful way for your institution to contribute to management education?

A good teaching case presents an interesting business situation and offers valuable learning opportunities. A truly great teaching case, however, places students in the position of decision-makers confronted with a complex challenge, compelling them to analyse, debate, and make choices under conditions of uncertainty.

Great cases are built around authentic managerial dilemmas that have no single correct answer or predetermined solution. They encourage students to grapple with competing priorities, incomplete information, and the trade-offs that characterise real-world leadership. Rather than focusing on what happened, they focus on the decisions that had to be made and the reasoning behind them.

Great teaching cases also strike a careful balance between narrative engagement and analytical rigour. They capture attention through a compelling story while providing sufficient depth to support meaningful analysis. They challenge assumptions, stimulate discussion, and invite learners to consider multiple perspectives before reaching a conclusion.

Perhaps most importantly, truly exceptional cases continue to generate insights long after the classroom discussion ends. They do not simply help students apply frameworks; they develop judgment. In a world characterised by increasing complexity and rapid change, the ability to think critically, evaluate alternatives, and make sound decisions is one of the most valuable outcomes that case-based learning can provide.

4. What does the winning case in your category reveal about the kind of thinking business schools should be cultivating in their students?

The winning case demonstrates that some of the most valuable management lessons can emerge from contexts that are often underrepresented in mainstream business education. African organisations frequently operate in environments characterised by rapid change, institutional complexity, resource constraints, and extraordinary entrepreneurial dynamism. As a result, they offer rich opportunities to explore innovation, resilience, adaptability, and stakeholder management.

What makes this particularly important for global business education is that these are precisely the capabilities that leaders everywhere increasingly need. The challenges faced by organisations today (uncertainty, disruption, sustainability pressures, and evolving societal expectations) require managers who can think beyond established models and develop creative, context-sensitive solutions.

The winning case reminds us that business schools should cultivate leaders who are comfortable navigating complexity, learning from diverse perspectives, and questioning assumptions. It also reinforces the idea that African case studies are not only relevant for understanding Africa; they enrich management education globally by bringing fresh insights, alternative approaches, and new ways of thinking about leadership and value creation.

Ultimately, the case illustrates that excellence in management education depends on exposing students to a diversity of contexts and experiences, allowing them to develop the agility and judgment needed to lead in an increasingly interconnected world.

---

About Sponsorship

EFMD Case Writing Competition is proud to have dedicated sponsors who drive management education towards impactful teaching and learning. Sponsoring a category allows you to showcase your institution’s expertise in the specific field of management education in the wide EFMD network. The choice of category, its exact definition and any specific conditions are the privileges of the sponsor. Sponsorships for the following categories are currently available: Continuous Improvement: the Journey to Excellence, and Finance and Banking. To find out more, please contact Petra Grestenbergerova at petra.grestenbergerova@efmdglobal.org.

More information about the 2025 EFMD Case Writing Competition winners can be found at the EFMD Case Writing Competition page. Please visit The Case Centre’s webpage to access the collection of the winning cases. See other interviews from this series.