Experience Stern | News & Events

The Toronto Star
TOR/ONT
Copyright (c) 2012 The Toronto Star

In the wake of the global financial crisis, business schools have been forced to find new role models for their students.

Some, including the prestigious Harvard Business School, have turned to the world of entertainment for their success stories, studying such pop stars as Lady Gaga and Gene Simmons.

When the financial crisis hit in 2008, one of its first casualties was faith in leadership. How could business leaders make decisions so obviously dumb?

That posed a problem for business schools and their traditional methods of teaching by example? There are plenty of case studies on how not to run a company. But professors also needed examples of how to do it right.

Students at Harvard's MBA program can now take a course called Strategic Marketing in Creative Industries, which looks at the career moves of 25-year-old singer Stefani Germanotta and her transformation into Lady Gaga.

The course examines a key moment in her career in 2009, when her co-headliner Kanye West pulled out of the Fame Kills tour just weeks before it began.

Instead, Gaga set out on a solo world tour called the Monster Ball. It grossed $227.4 million and helped her become Forbes magazine's most powerful celebrity in 2011.

It was a career-defining moment for Gaga; but also a chance for Harvard students to learn about the importance of contracts and how to manage your message through social media.

Harvard isn't the only school studying Gaga. Two major European schools have also turned their spotlight on her as a lesson in leadership. Germany's ESMT and Antwerp Management in the Netherlands have come up with a case study called Lady Gaga: Born This Way to teach MBA students strategic innovation.

Elsewhere, schools are turning to other stars for inspiration.

In the U.K., the London Business School reached into rock music's past for lessons on how to turn a fan base into hard cash.

Last November, Kiss guitarist Gene Simmons shed his trademark make-up and platform boots to tell the school's MBA students how the band's brand now licenses about 3,000 products, from coffee houses to coffins. So successful has the Kiss enterprise become that Simmons told the audience he wouldn't part with it, even if "someone offered me a billion dollars."

The music industry isn't the only inspiration. NYU Stern and MIT Sloan are using playwrights to teach leadership techniques. As a result, many MBA grads can now boast as much knowledge of how Julius Caesar or Henry V overcame obstacles as how Steve Jobs or Bill Gates built their empires.

Even haute cuisine chefs are providing guidance and advice. The EM Lyon school in France, for example, has partnered with Chef Paul Bocuse to look at how teams work effectively in the fast-moving and high-pressure environments of world-class restaurants.

At Canadian schools, it's not musicians, chefs or thespians that are getting attention - it's hockey stars.

Toronto University's Rotman school has brought in speakers from pro hockey teams. Toronto Maple Leafs' GM Brian Burke shared his views on such topics as Steve Jobs and the need to be tough. "There isn't anyone who has made a hard decision who doesn't have a ruthless side," he told the students.

He also urged them to always have a plan, whether it's for their careers, a trip to the supermarket or building a hockey team.

At the Desautels faculty of McGill University in Montreal, Prof. David Lank turned to someone who got the job done under circumstances that would challenge all but the truly exceptional.

His MBA students learn lessons in leadership from retired general Roméo Dallaire, head of the ill-fated UN peacekeepers during the 1994 Rwanda crisis.

With than 200 troops, Dallaire managed to out-manoeuvre vastly superior forces to save thousands of lives, a salutary lesson in what can be achieved by an inspirational leader, no matter how sparse the resources at his (or her) disposal.

MBA students are studying performers such as Lady Gaga and Gene Simmons as models of success. Kevin Winter/GETTY IMAGES