Your Course of Study
Designed by HBS faculty with extensive industry experience, the curriculum addresses the central issues that confront media companies. Via relevant case studies and small group sessions, you will:
- Examine companies from a wide range of media industries, including print, publishing, radio, television, and music
- Address issues that are key to each of these arenas and that exemplify industry best practices
- Gain a comprehensive understanding of how to meet the two central challenges for media organizations today:
- Getting noticed by audiences bombarded with a superabundance of choices
- Getting paid for the content your company provides
- Interact with a group of peers with diverse functional, cultural, and industry backgrounds
The program addresses four themes: the evolution of technology, changes in customer behavior, strategic responses to competing business models, and organizing for innovation.
- Technology
- Identifying central sources of competition amid newly emerging and rapidly evolving technologies
- Formulating strategic moves in an environment of substantial technological uncertainty
- Customer behavior
- Understanding the impact of technology on consumer behavior
- Exploiting customer heterogeneity through new business models
- Customers as innovators
- Business models
- Identifying a range of strategic options: process and idea generation, timing, execution
- Principles behind effective strategies
- Product versus portfolio approaches
- Business versus corporate strategy
- Organization
- Managing change: strategy and process
- Organizational structures and re-design
- Leadership, culture, and strategic change
"One of the most valuable elements of the program was the opportunity to examine the challenges traditional media companies face and the actions they've taken to transform themselves while maintaining the balance between past and future. The HBS learning experience offers the powerful reminder that every problem, even the most demanding and difficult, can be solved—or at least managed—by assembling a team of knowledgeable, experienced and trusted people. By providing a supportive environment, you can enable team members to work together effectively and can help them expand their abilities in the process."
Fausto Federici [Advisor to the Chairman], Editoriale Domus Rozzano-Milan, Italy