Former Miami Heat player Chris Bosh completed 15 case studies during his participation in the Crossover Into Business program in 2017.Kwame Owusu-Kesse
The night after the Super Bowl, a delegation of 10 NFL players gathered in Boston, not for the New England Patriots celebratory parade, but for a welcome reception with 15 other professional athletes.
The mixer marked the opening of the latest edition of Crossover Into Business, a no-cost Harvard Business School program designed to create mentor relationships between active pro athletes and HBS executive education students.
Players began the program the next morning by splitting into two groups, with each spending time observing a class taken by second-year MBA students, and in a session led by the program’s creator, HBS professor Anita Elberse, discussing two business cases assigned the prior week.
In the afternoon, the players heard elevator pitches from 50 second-year MBA students, who presented in pairs, explaining their background and what they hoped to take away from Harvard. Then, in a twist on a familiar process, each athlete drafted a pair of mentors.
Over the course of the semester, players are required to analyze and discuss three Harvard business cases with their mentors and deliver midterm and final presentations based on two additional cases. The final, based on a Dwyane Wade endorsement negotiation, has each player build a strategy for Wade, then deliver a 30-minute presentation to a panel of judges that includes Elberse and several MBA students.
Milwaukee Bucks forward Pat Connaughton was among the players enrolled in the program in fall of 2017.Kwame Owusu-Kesse
While players are required to complete seven cases, some review more. Taking the class while sidelined by a blood clotting disorder in 2017, then-Miami Heat forward Chris Bosh completed 15 cases, Elberse said.
By offering the class in both the spring and fall semesters, HBS allows players to go to campus when it won’t conflict with their playing schedules. Other than the required kickoff visit, they can complete their work remotely.
“It has become more accepted that athletes are also involved on the business side, and you can even argue that it has become cool,” said Elberse, pointing to applications from dozens more athletes than she could accept this semester. “I don’t think that was the case 20 years ago. If you were an active athlete and said, ‘I’m thinking about my brand,’ people would have said, ‘What the heck are you doing?’ But with the Magic Johnsons and LeBrons and others showing the value you can create if you are an entrepreneur and do pay attention, I think that has opened other athletes’ eyes.”
The selection of Wade’s case as the final is not coincidental.
It was Wade who indirectly sparked the demand that led to the Crossover program, enrolling in Elberse’s four-day executive education class that focuses on the business of entertainment, media and sports in 2015, paying his own way in a class priced at $10,000. A year later, fellow NBA All-Stars Chris Paul and Pau Gasol signed up. A year after that, Portland Trail Blazers guard CJ McCollum enrolled.
When the NBA asked Elberse if she thought many other players would benefit from the class, she responded that it didn’t matter, because with only 80 spots available for those interested from across all businesses, she had room for only a handful of players.
“The question is, how can we help a lot of players and how can we best serve them?” Elberse said. “The idea that came up was a mentorship program, which is what I think the Crossover Into Business program really is.”
While NFL and NBA players both have access to players association benefits that pay for education and training, HBS offers its program at no cost. Along with players from the NBA, NFL and MLB, Crossover has included those from the UFC, WNBA, MLS and women’s soccer.
“I wanted to open it up to different types of athletes than the ones I saw vying for the executive education program,” Elberse said. “The exec education program I teach costs $10,000. That may be doable for the Dwyane Wades or Chris Pauls or Martellus Bennetts. But it’s harder to do for the younger athlete and definitely harder to do for the female athlete. So I figured we should do this for free.”
