Description

Can rap songs help MBA students to pass their final exams while also improving teacher evaluations? Berkeley, Harvard, and MIT decided to find out.

In 2021, Professor Abhishek Nagaraj invited Baba Brinkman to visit an MBA seminar at Harvard Business School and break down the four quadrants of the “entrepreneurial compass” in a custom rap segment, and combine that performance with a ‘rap up’ recap commentary on the MBA seminar case study discussion, working the contribution of each individual student who spoke into the rap.

This event (and video) was such a hit at Harvard, that Professor Scott Stern asked Baba to bring the same rap up magic to MIT, and then Professor Nagaraj invited Baba to revisit the performance for a new case study each semester in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025, creating a recurring event series.

Each video contains a unique rap up summary of an MBA seminar discussion, and a unique case study analyzing a different company or company strategy in relation to the EnStrat Compass, weaving together the contributions of individual students (aka current and future executives with Ivy League MBAs) analyzing the entrepreneurial strategy of an assigned startup case study, with one of the company executives present to answer questions about their growth strategy.

The Entrepreneurial Strategy compass, aka the “EnStrat Compass” is a model for defining market segmentation and customer acquisition, developed by Scott Stern, Erin Scott and Josh Gans and taught by many business school professors worldwide, including Berkeley HaaS business professor Abhishek Nagaraj.

Learn more about the EnStrat Compass in the Harvard Business Review.

Videos