Professors at Harvard Business School (HBS) have written a case study on EbonyLife Media that will be taught in the required curriculum for all first-year MBA students this academic year
The classes took place yesterday, November 18 at the HBS campus in Boston, Massachusetts and involved more than 1,000 Harvard MBA students and multiple faculty.
This means that a case about an African company, led by a Nigerian woman, will be read by all first-year students currently at Harvard Business School. The EbonyLife case study will become one of approximately 500 case studies read by students over the course of the two-year MBA programme. Nearly half of these cases are based on global organisations.
EbonyLife CEO Mo Abudu has been invited to observe the case being taught and to share her personal insights with the students during three class sessions throughout the day. Like most executives invited to participate, Ms. Abudu will listen to students discuss the case for the first hour, then the students will have a chance to ask her questions during the last 20-25 minutes of each class. The interaction will be streamed to other class sessions happening at the same time. Later that day, she will have other opportunities to interact with students and faculty, to offer further insight into her approach to EbonyLife’s strategic growth.
Mo Abudu joins a long list of CEOs, including Warren Buffet and Elon Musk, whose strategies and decisions have been analysed in HBS case studies. She said, “At first, I was surprised by Harvard’s interest in us, however, I can now see how a diverse faculty and student body could benefit from looking at how companies in Africa and other parts of the world deal with challenges unique to their environment. I’m looking forward to the discussions and the students’ perspectives.”
The HBS case study is to be presented in two parts – A and B. Case study A chronicles the journey of EbonyLife Media from inception to December 2020, while case study B provides a summary of what has occurred between January and October 2021. Having read case study A, the students will have to consider the choices chronicled in the HBS case study abstract below and give their analysis. Through interaction with Mo Abudu and the reading of case study B, they will be able to find out what has happened since the case was written and how appropriate their evaluation and recommendations have been.