Faculty and Research

Anita Elberse is an Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Marketing unit at Harvard Business School.

Professor Elberse develops and teaches a course on Strategic Marketing in Creative Industries, covering the businesses of media, entertainment, and sports, for second-year MBA students. She also teaches in Strategic Marketing Management, Taking Marketing Digital, and other short programs for executives, and previously taught Marketing to first-year MBA students. Her course was featured in Variety's Entertainment Education report, Poets & Quants named her one of the world's 40 best business school professors under the age of 40, she received Harvard Business School's Charles M. Williams Award for excellence in teaching, and she was given the Faculty Teaching Award as well as "Best of EC Year" honors (for top faculty teaching in the Elective Curriculum) from the HBS Class of 2011.

In her research, Professor Elberse primarily aims to understand what drives the success of products in the media, entertainment, sports, and other creative industries, and how firms can develop effective marketing strategies for such products. She is acclaimed for her work on digital-media strategies. Her wider areas of study include the impact of digital technology on marketing practice, the marketing and management of talent, and the application of econometric modeling techniques to marketing problems. Her work has been published in a number of journals, including the Harvard Business Review, Marketing Science, the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Advertising Research, and the Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics. Her research has also appeared in leading print and broadcast media. She was named a Marketing Science Institute Young Scholar in 2011, and serves on the editorial boards of both Marketing Science and the Journal of Advertising Research.

Professor Elberse has conducted case studies on dozens of media and entertainment companies, personalities, and other entities. Firms featured include A&M/Octone Records, Comcast, Grand Central Publishing, Hulu, Marvel Enterprises, MGM, Sony, and The CW. Other case studies focus on the marketing of New York City, the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, nightlife business Marquee, the Metropolitan Opera, sports leagues MLB and the NFL, soccer clubs Boca Juniors and Real Madrid, and superstars Lady Gaga, LeBron James, Radiohead, and Maria Sharapova.

Prior to joining Harvard Business School, professor Elberse was a Visiting Fellow and Lecturer at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. She holds a PhD from London Business School, an MA in Communication from the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California, and an MA in Communication Science from the University of Amsterdam (cum laude). A native of The Netherlands, she was awarded a Netherland-America Foundation/Fulbright Fellowship.

Professor Elberse was promoted to full professor with tenure at age 38, making her one of the youngest female professors to achieve that honor in Harvard Business School's history.