OTA

The OTA-200 Study

200 cases. Five modalities. Three phases. One methodology.

Free to read, search, and study on this site. Cite with attribution; no redistribution or commercial reuse (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) — License & Terms.

About the research

What the study is

Two hundred episodes of organisational success and failure — one hundred of each — each reconstructed from primary and secondary sources and scored against the same fifteen-cell grid: five modalities crossed with the three phases of the OTA loop.

Every case identifies where the loop actually broke — or held — and attributes the outcome to specific, dated, sourced decisions rather than to hindsight narrative. Scoring follows a published, versioned methodology (currently v4) with blind quality-control review.

Why is all of this free?

Stated plainly

Because the data is not the book. The corpus, the scores, and the methodology are open here in full so the claims can be checked. What the book adds — the narrative of the cases, the synthesis across them, and the toolkit that follows from it — is exactly the part a dataset cannot give you. The evidence is free; the argument is the book.

The corpus at a glance

Composition

200

cases

100 / 100

successes / failures

15

grid cells scored per case

v4

methodology version

Most common archetypes

Sustained Excellence
50
Catastrophic Failure
31
Scandal/Fraud
24
Incumbent Adaptation
22
Slow Decline
12
Turnaround
12

35 archetypes in total — filter the full list in the corpus browser.

Browse all 200 casesRead the methodology

What the scores show

Before interpretation

Every case carries attribution weights: how much of the episode’s outcome each phase of the loop, and each modality, accounts for. Averaged across all 200 scored cases, two patterns are visible before any interpretation is applied. The book is where they are interpreted.

Mean phase attribution

Successes vs. failures, mean % of outcome attributed to each phase.

Observeall 21%
Successes
27.9%
Failures
14.1%
Thinkall 54%
Successes
45.8%
Failures
62.2%
Actall 25.1%
Successes
26.4%
Failures
23.8%

Primary modality, by outcome

The modality carrying most of the outcome, counted across cases.

Direction
101 (70S/31F)
Culture
57 (8S/49F)
Processes
22 (10S/12F)
Capability
12 (10S/2F)
Structure
8 (2S/6F)

Attribution weights express where an episode turned — not a performance grade. A phase can be executed admirably and still carry little of the outcome, or be scored “Hard-Correct” in a case that ended in bankruptcy.

Question the data

That is what it is here for

Access to the corpus includes the ability to challenge it. If a source does not support a claim, a score looks wrong, or a citation is broken, use the structured correction form. Implemented corrections are published in the Corrections Log — versioned, case-indexed, and credited.

Coverage & citations

Press mentions and academic citations of the OTA-200 Study will be listed here as they appear.