Harvard Business Studies BTS Worldwide Success

ARMYs must be very proud of their Bangtan Boys when the BTS is officially featured in the Harvard curriculum. A professor at Harvard Business School, Anita Elberse, has conducted a case study on how BTS achieved its worldwide success. The case study is entitled “Big Hit Entertainment and Blockbuster Band BTS: KPop Goes Global.”

Harvard Business School Case Study

🚨 Coming soon to my classroom at Harvard! Like and respond with hashtag #pickme if you’d like a chance to win a free copy of my new case on @BTS_BigHit and @BigHitEnt ! #bts #kpop #btsarmy 🕺🏻 pic.twitter.com/mCncQrOu9x

— Anita Elberse (@anitaelberse) June 25, 2020

On June 25, Anita Elberse, one of the professors at Harvard Business School, tweeted about having BTS in her classroom at Harvard. Surprisingly, it caught the attention of ARMYs and got many positive responses worldwide.

Who is Anita Elberse?

Professor Anita Elberse was graduated from London Business School and is currently a professor of Business Administration of Harvard Business. Her studies are mostly about the impact of media, entertainment, and sports on the economy.

The study was actually conducted in August 2019 when Anita Elberse went to Seoul, South Korea in a working trip. This study about BTS worldwide success is going to be taught in this upcoming semester in Harvard Business School.

BTS as the Research Subject

On her Twitter, she also shared the first page of the case study, entitled “Big Hit Entertainment and Blockbuster Band BTS: KPop Goes Global.” The 22-page research discussed how BTS, under Big Hit Entertainment, raised from teenage trainees to successful idols. 

Thanking the ARMY, Elberse wrote, “I see you Armys, and I’m impressed! Thank you for the overwhelmingly positive response to the case study on Big Hit and BTS! I wish I could but I can’t possibly give you all a free case study… I’ll see if we can set up a virtual class session for all of you where I suspect you will be the teachers and I’ll be the student.”

Big Hit and BTS

In fact, the relationship and collaboration between agency and artists is an essential thing. The co-leader of the Big Hit artist protocol department, Sejin Kim, said, “We emphasize the notion of winning together. We want to break an industry practice that is very hierarchical, where artists are at the bottom.”

Bang Si-Hyuk, Big Hit chair and chief executive, makes sure that the artists can thrive and grow. He revealed that the name “Big Hit” was aimed to give the world one of its greatest hits.

Music and Artist of Healing

BTS Debut

BTS worldwide success is not out of the blue. The septet went through ups and downs. They were mocked because of their name Bangtan Sonyeondan (방탄소년단) which means Bulletproof Boy Scouts.

Debuted in 2010 under Big Hit Entertainment, RM, Suga, Jin, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook were said to be the copy of Big Bang. However, they have proven that they have their own music and fandom, called ARMY.

BTS Training Program

The case study done Anita Elberse also mentioned a quote from Bang Shi-Hyuk, “Big Hit’s training program is much like a college class in that we discuss with each trainee to negotiate the best schedule. The program also includes a music appreciation course to allow the trainees to find out what type of music that they like and how to make that kind of music.”

Big Hit Mission

Mentioned in Harvard Business School study, Big Hit’s mission is “Music and Artist for Healing.” This is quite a big mission that BTS has carried all the way of the carrier.

Quoted from Kyung Min-Bae, Assistant professorial fellow at the University of the Philippines (UP) Department of Linguistics and research fellow at the UP Korea Research Center, “Healing, like in English, means emotional comfort. But in the Korean context, since Koreans are always pressured and stressed out by social norms or modern life, it has become an important notion in culture or lifestyle.”

BTS Historical Records

🦢🖤 pic.twitter.com/2gcDmjCNyS

— BTS Charts (@btschartdata) July 6, 2020

The septet of RM, Suga, Jin, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook has achieved worldwide success, both as a group and individual. Here are a very few of their recent achievements as a group:

• Black Swan – #1 on iTunes Charts in more than 100 countries
• Stay Gold – #1 on Billboard World Digital Song Sales Chart
• Map of The Soul: 7 Album – “Quadruple Million” and first album receiving certification in Gaon Chart’s history
• ON – Top 5 of Billboard Hot 100
• Map of The Soul: 7 – Top Oricon Album Sales Chart

BTS Inspirational Music and Speech

The global success of BTS is not only amazed Kpop fans, but also made senior scholars from prestigious university like Harvard conducted a research. In fact, BTS carries Big Hit’s mission to be “music and artist for healing” with the musics and speeches.

The recent music from BTS’s Japanese album, Stay Gold, for example, teaches us to always be positive no matter what happened. Things will turn to be brighter afterwards.

Moreover, their commencement speech in Dear Class of 2020 also inspired young people, either Kpop fans or not.