Media, entertainment, and professional sports

Analysis of college coach compensation shows how hard it is to align pay with performance.

The annual shareholder meeting of Yahoo! Inc. last month was an “unlikely lovefest” — according to the report of the event in the New York Times — unlikely because the company’s stagnant stock price and poor performance against its competitors would seem to have invited a more critical session. The lovefest carried through more than […]

TV without social will be as hard to remember as movies without sound.

When Alex Ferguson took over as manager of the English football team Manchester United, the club was in dire straits: It hadn't won a league title in...

When you head up a big construction project for your organization, coming in on time and on budget isn't enough. If you want to avoid squandering what...

The Idea: After losing a proxy fight to the activist investor Carl Icahn, Blockbuster’s then CEO faced a new obstacle: executing strategy in the face of boardroom opposition. He looks back on what he might have done differently.

It’s time for producers of entertainment—movie studios, broadcast and cable TV networks, video game makers, publishers, music labels—to change the way they launch and market their products. In entertainment markets, a sizable portion of revenue is typically generated by a small number of blockbuster movies, best-selling books, and hit songs. But even talented, experienced executives […]

Editor's Note: This fictionalized case study will appear in a forthcoming issue of Harvard Business Review, along with commentary from experts and readers....

The front man for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus on directing the attention of 20,000 people today while balancing 138 years of tradition on his back.

Behind Pixar’s string of hit movies, says the studio’s president, is a peer-driven process for solving problems.

Being an online media consumer in Canada is a lot like living your life with your nose pressed up against the glass of a really tempting candy shop. But instead of candy, the shelves are stocked with text, audio and video content to die for. This wonderful store we Canadians peer into, longingly, is usually […]

You can’t get the deal done over the phone.

James Patterson is one of the world’s most prolific and popular fiction writers, thanks to a fast-paced style and genre-spanning oeuvre, his collaboration (by fax!) with coauthors, and the marketing savvy he acquired as an ad executive. How does he make good on a four-year, 26-book deal while experiencing “zero stress”? By thinking efficiently yet […]

When I was a kid, I devoured the Olympics on TV. I watched every event I could, and knew who the most likely competitors were for the gold, silver, and...

The well-known child actor, now an award-winning director, talks about his career arc.

With the new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) in the bag, the lock-out finished, and the NFL season ready to start uninterrupted, it is worth asking...

What's at stake for the future of the music industry.

Joe Girardi wrote in a third-grade essay that he wanted to play for the Chicago Cubs and grew up to do exactly that. After retiring from catching, he coached for the New York Yankees and managed the Florida Marlins for one year, at the end of which he was both fired and named National League […]

Photography: Webb Chappell Russell Simmons remains a man on the move. Since launching the Def Jam record label, in 1984, the hip-hop mogul has expanded into fashion, financial services, TV, and film. Over a recent 48-hour period he hosted 200 religious leaders at his house, spoke with Al Gore onstage, gave multiple interviews while negotiating […]

Information industries are sexy, but they make lousy exporters.