Why Exactly Is Beyoncé ‘Flawless’?

December 13, 2013. It’s just after midnight, and Beyoncé has released her fifth solo album, an album that she managed to keep secret until its reveal in 119 countries. Fans and the media are shocked. How could there have been no leaks? How had the star partnered with Apple, Facebook and Instagram to keep the 14 songs and 17 companion videos a secret? How did one of the most watched women in the world keep an album under wraps that would gross $1.43 million within a month?

Harvard regularly studies leading politicians or Nobel Prize winners to see just how they got to where they are today. But this week the question is being posed to a different subject: one of the world’s biggest celebrities. Anita Elberse, Lincoln Filene Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and Stacie Smith, MBA ’14 tackle one of the greatest stunts of the past year in a study set to be released in the next few days.

Beyoncé has described the decision as an effort to keep the album intact, making a point about the problems of releasing singles prior to the album itself. But Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield described the release as: “a celebration of the Beyoncé Philosophy, which basically boils down to the fact that Beyoncé can do anything the hell she wants to.”

And the public and the media don’t seem to mind that Beyoncé can basically control the world (except maybe the time she took over Lenox Hill Hospital to give birth to her daughter Blue Ivy, which was met with protest from mothers who were upset that they couldn’t see their own newborn children). ‘Beyoncé’ was the fastest selling item in the iTunes store ever—even though customers were required to buy the entire album and couldn’t purchase any individual song.

The Harvard Business School study questions the business sense of such a huge worldwide musical surprise. After iTunes’ exclusive weeklong sales ended, major retailers such as Target and Amazon refused to sell the album. How is it possible to follow-up on such an influential release? Isn’t Beyoncé’s sixth album bound to be somewhat anti-climactic? And can other artists do it, or is this a strategy reserved for Sasha Fierce?

Elberse, who studies successful products in entertainment and other creative fields, will be teaching the Beyoncé case in her class “Strategic Marketing in Creative Industries.” She is the author of “Blockbusters: Hit-making, Risk-taking and the Big Business of Entertainment,” which analyzes the success of superstars, including the other half of the Knowles-Carter power duo, Jay Z.

The Harvard community waits for the release of Elberse and Smith’s study this week. Yes, Harvard kids are able to hear from leaders in a variety of fields on a daily basis, but they also want to know how Beyoncé pulled it off. From Single Ladies on Saturday nights to late night p-sets accompanied by Crazy in Love, HBS must know that Beyoncé is an honorary Harvard woman, too.