Thanks for sending your response.
Your input will help us improve your experience.
Thanks for sending your response.
Your input will help us improve your experience.You can close this popup to continue using the website or choose an option below to register in or log in.
Already have an account? Sign in
More knowledge, more power
Sign up free to keep exploring.
Access unlimited articles and study guides
Discover top subjects and destinations
Get the personalised guidance you need to succeed
Back
Sign up with Google
Sign up with Facebook
By signing up I agree to share my data and according to
User agreement, Cookie policy
and
Privacy policy.
OR
Sign up
Sign up with Email
Already have an account?
Sign in
We use Necessary cookies to make our website work. We’d also like to set optional Functional cookies to gather anonymous site visitation data and Advertising cookies to help us understand which content our visitors value the most. By enabling these cookies, you can help us provide a better website for you. These will be set only if you accept.More information about the cookies we use can be found here Cookies Policy
These cookies are necessary for the website to function and cannot be switched off in our systems. They are usually only set in response to actions made by you which amount to a request for services, such as setting your privacy preferences, logging in, or filling in forms.
We may use a set of cookies to collect information, report site usage statistics and understand how visitors engage with the website. In addition to reporting site usage statistics, data collected may also be used to personalize your experience and remember your chat history. We may also use these data, together with some of the advertising cookies described, to help show more relevant ads across the web and to measure interactions with the ads we show.
We use cookies to make our ads more engaging and valuable to site visitors. Some common applications of cookies are to select advertising based on what’s relevant to a user; to improve reporting on ad campaign performance; and to avoid showing ads the user has already seen.
Help us to know you better
Thanks for visiting TopUniversities.com today! So that we can show you the most relevant information, please select the option that most closely relates to you.
Views
Beyoncé to Feature in New HBS Case Study
Save
Share
Share via
Share this Page12
Table of contents
Table of contents
Image: arvzdix/Shutterstock.com
A Harvard Business School professor who has become something of a rock star by studying rock stars is rolling out her latest case study next week, on none other than a musical force of nature, Beyoncé.
The case study was written by Anita Elberse and a former HBS MBA student Stacie Smith. It focuses on the star’s 2013 surprise release of her fifth solo album and will be taught in Elberse’s ‘Strategic Marketing in Creative Industries’ course starting next month.
The self-titled 14-song collection was released on iTunes just after midnight on December 13 without any advance publicity, taking everyone by surprise. Within six days the album had sold a million digital copies. By the time the year was out it had sold 2.3 million units worldwide.
Beyoncé’s approach creates teachable moments
The questions raised by the release—a big gamble for Beyoncé’s management company, Parkwood Entertainment, and her label, Columbia Records—will make for a compelling case study.
The big one, of course, is did the high-stakes gamble pay off? The case study examines the many obstacles Beyoncé encountered in plotting the secret roll-out and the decisions her management team had to make. Drawing on insights from top executives at Parkwood, Columbia, Facebook, and Apple, the case study puts Elberse’s students in the driver’s seat.
Elberse told the Harvard Gazette that Beyoncé’s hands-on approach to her own business interests allows her to present a number of teachable moments.
“She’s clearly among the most powerful people in the music industry at the moment,” Elberse says. “So to understand the operation behind such a powerful figure is always very interesting,”
Elberse, who did not respond to a request for comment, has written dozens of case studies on media and entertainment companies for HBS, as well as the wildly successful Netflix drama House of Cards starring Kevin Spacey, and sports and music personalities including Lady Gaga, LeBron James, and Maria Sharapova.
Her strategic marketing course is one of the most sought-after among MBA students at Harvard Business School, where she has won numerous teaching awards. She is one of the youngest female professors to be promoted to full professor with tenure in Harvard Business School’s history.
Recommended Articles Last year
Universities of the future:…
Nunzio Quacquarelli interviews leaders of universities who are innovating in the world of higher education. In this article, he speaks to Professor John Quelch from Duke Kunshan University.
Thought leadership and the M…
TopMBA sat down with Tsinghua University's Associate Dean, Professor Xin Xu, to talk about expanding horizons, transforming business education for a new economy and striving to become the world’s best business school.
Changing the Gender Paradigm…
Business schools have an opportunity and responsibility to model future leadership that shifts the gender paradigm, says RSM’s Dianne Bevelander.