November 14, 2026
From Future’s Little one to Cécred, USC grad college students will research the enterprise technique that made the worldwide music icon a billionaire.
The enterprise of Beyoncé is formally hitting the books. The College of Southern California (USC) is placing the Grammy-winning famous person’s entrepreneurial journey on the heart of a brand new MBA course designed to show college students how celeb, branding, and strategic enterprise selections can translate into an leisure empire.
USC’s Marshall College of Enterprise will launch “The Enterprise of Beyoncé” in January 2027, the Los Angeles Instances stories. The 16-week course, developed by professor Shaun Harper, will study Beyoncé’s evolution from a childhood performer and Future’s Little one member into a world entertainer with enterprise pursuits spanning music, magnificence, style, and spirits.
“My class shouldn’t be going to be only a set of conversations about Beyoncé,” Harper advised the LA Instances.
As a substitute, college students will study the enterprise selections behind the famous person’s model, together with her strategy to social media, advertising, possession, and viewers engagement. The curriculum may also discover different influential performers and business actions, together with The Supremes, Janet Jackson, BTS, and Motown’s position in shaping Black music.
The course arrives as Beyoncé continues increasing her enterprise portfolio. She based Parkwood Leisure in 2010, giving her a platform to handle and produce initiatives throughout leisure. Her ventures have since included the athleisure model Ivy Park, Cécred, her haircare firm, and SirDavis, her whiskey model launched in partnership with Moët Hennessy. She later purchased out the spirits firm’s stake, based on the Los Angeles Instances. Her enterprise ventures, paired with a number of sold-out worldwide live performance excursions lately, have catapulted Queen Bey’s internet value into the billions, Forbes stories.
The music icon’s strategy to constructing companies additionally affords classes in possession and capital. Beyoncé’s mom, Tina Knowles, beforehand advised Fortune that the singer financed Cécred herself after potential traders pushed for lowered analysis and improvement spending in favor of selling.
Past analyzing her enterprise selections, college students will likely be challenged to assume like consultants. One project requires them to organize a 700- to 1,000-word enterprise technique doc addressed on to Beyoncé.
For Kendall Ferguson, a second-year MBA scholar enrolled within the course, finding out a Black businesswoman alongside a Black professor carries further significance.
“I’m positively not the standard stereotype of MBA,” Ferguson stated, including that she sees the course as a possibility to grasp how Beyoncé maintains shopper engagement whereas increasing into new markets.
One other scholar, Maddie Gissler, is interested by leisure advertising, branding, and technique. She sees Beyoncé’s means to evolve throughout industries as a possibility to review how a recognizable model can stay related whereas coming into new enterprise classes. In the meantime, Professor Harper believes Beyoncé’s fastidiously managed public presence is a part of the enterprise lesson.
“Beyoncé exhibits up when she wants to point out up,” he stated.
