Superstars plan next career with Harvard Course – United States
Four-day executive education classes held at Harvard Business School in the United States last month, in which some football superstar, the actress, and the rapper walk into a classroom.
Barcelona defender Gerard Pique, actress Katie Holmes, and Irish rugby union player Jamie Heaslip took part in this course and sit with students taking the Business of Sport, Media, and Entertainment courses.
“Several applicants would like to know how to devise their brand and construct a business around it, to commence a second career after their current one is ended, or simply how to enter into new careers,” says course leader Professor Anita Elberse.
No special behavior
None of them gets special treatment as, during the course, they eat meals together and sleep in the Harvard dormitories.In point of fact, it might be pretty refreshing for them.
“They really know that if they speak something that makes no sense then I or someone else in the class will inform them they are incorrect,” says Professor Anita.
The main motive behind the enrolments of big names from sports and entertainment for the course is to capitalize on the rising significance of being superstar brands in these fields.
Betting big strategy
The inclination and this trend were acknowledged by Prof Elberse in her book, Blockbusters.
She squabbles that housing a business about “blockbuster products” – creating high impacts with a small number, huge outlay films, TV shows, books or star names – is “the surest trail to long-term triumph”.
Real Madrid and Barcelona football clubs are a live example of this strategy.
Social media is playing a massive role in the acceleration of the superstar which lets individuals bond frankly with fans, rather than work all the way through publishers or agents.
Sporting opportunities
The course line is taught using Harvard Business School’s case study method. Students are given the task of looking into 10 latest examples of success and failure in the sports, music industries and entertainment.
These contain Beyonce’s risk to launch an album in 2013 devoid of any earlier marketing and advertising, and the choice by a production company to put up for sale the TV series House of Cards to Netflix rather than a conventional TV network in 2011.
To converse and discuss the case studies students are separated into small groups, and then the groups present their end results and findings to the rest of the class.
Ultra networking
Jamie Heaslip, having an undergraduate degree in medical engineering and a master’s in business gives his views that the case study technique was “very special to what I’ve experienced in my own learning and education period” however “extremely insightful”.
“There were high-up executives operating TV companies and studios in the room so it was truly appealing to avail the opportunity to know about their point of view,” he says.
The outlay intended for course are $10,000 (£7,700) for individuals and no prior educational qualifications are necessary.
Approximately 60 students giving attendance each year, cynics could declare that it is an effortless source of profits for Harvard.
In nutshell, this type, of course, permits students to state they went to Harvard, were taught by a famous professor, and intermingled with other cool students.
