In the 103 years since management bible Harvard Business Review was founded it has grown to be the heart of a nearly $100m a year business with more than 300,000 paying subscribers. But how does a business model built on charging for access to expert opinion stand up in an era when plenty of professionals give it away for free on Linkedin?
Asked this, HBR’s new editor in chief, Amy Bernstein, told Press Gazette: “Anyone can call themselves an expert, right?”
Bernstein, who was promoted to the top job this month after 13 years editing the print HBR magazine, said the title is well-poised to survive as AI-driven “good enough” content proliferates online.
Harvard Business Review is published by Harvard Business Publishing, a nonprofit affiliate of Harvard Business School which is itself part of the famous university in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The nonprofit has three main components which collectively generated nearly $300m in 2023: a media segment containing HBR and the nonprofit’s book publishing business, a corporate learning operation, and a higher education division which sells teaching materials.
“We’re primarily a subscription business,” said Adi Ignatius, HBR’s editor in chief from 2009 who this month took on the role of editor at large. “That’s our model, that’s our main revenue source, but obviously we sell advertising, we’re very dependent on sponsorship as well.”
A single issue of the magazine, which comes out every other month, costs $19.95 on the newsstand while an annual print and digital combination subscription is priced just below $170. The magazine’s overall paid circulation was 343,321 in December according to the Alliance for Audited Media, and it has around 210,000 print and 120,000 digital subscriptions.
HBR does not employ any dedicated staff reporters, instead fielding a small army of staff editors to work with the contributors who provide most of the magazine’s content. Bernstein said the brand was “pretty careful” about who it will publish.
“These are people who have to have demonstrated expertise in a field, have done some research, or had some pretty deep experience that they are willing to talk about with transparency.”
‘We own the C-suite more than any other publication’
When he arrived at Harvard Business Review from Time Magazine in 2009, Ignatius said, the magazine was focused on long-form academic articles, which are “still, in many ways, the most valuable thing we produce”.
But he said those articles were still “accessible” to a lay audience, so the question was how HBR could grow its reach among readers who otherwise “might think the brand is too academic, too theoretical, just not for them”.
Ignatius said “we really did have a period of amazing growth where our competitors were faltering”, helped by a push into digital content, video and more short-form written content. But it is harder to keep up that momentum today, he said.
“Google doesn’t send anybody traffic the way they used to, so simply building up traffic and then finding ways to monetise that through subscription or through sponsorship is more challenging now.”
One way Harvard Business Review is pursuing growth amid the headwinds is by building out its offering for c-suite readers, which Ignatius will oversee in his new role as editor at large.
Focusing on executives has become a popular strategy for publishers seeking growth. Semafor, for example, has launched a newsletter it says is exclusively for chief executives of companies with at least $500m annual revenue, while Forbes has built out a series of events and editorial products that give executives a space to network and find professional advice.
But, Ignatius said, “we own the C-suite more than any other publication”.
He acknowledged “it is a crowded space”, but argued HBR was differentiated by its focus on “practical solutions”.
“We won’t just say: ‘Oh, wow! Supply chains are really a mess these days.’ We’ll say: ‘Here’s a playbook for managing supply chains in this era of disruption.’”
HBR’s content ranges from broad, stepped-back advice for management and business professionals (i.e. “Research: How to Delegate Decision-Making Strategically“) to the specific (“When Your Coworkers Got Laid Off — But You Didn’t“) and the topical (“What Comes After DEI?“)
Bernstein agreed with Ignatius, saying: “We’re not a bazaar of cool ideas. What we are is a very carefully vetted selection of proven ideas, approaches that have worked for others, and we’re very transparent about what we know and what we don’t know…
“In a world that is increasingly homogenised by AI, where the information is all seeming to come from the same place and getting mixed up together and served in various ways, we have to be better than good enough.
“We believe that our expertise, the editorial care with which we vet our ideas and the way that we bring ideas to our subscribers… that’s what will set us apart.”
‘You can use AI to help write your articles, but tell us please’
The HBR bosses are not shying away from AI, however.
“I had a big interview with somebody – a long transcript, unintelligible here and there – and used ChatGPT to just turn it into a lively 1,000-word Q and A,” Ignatius said.
“It required checking, obviously – vetting and editing on my part. But we’re using it more and more to handle some of the grunt work of editing, before the artistic layer kicks in.”
Bernstein said the editors ask contributors to disclose when they have used AI in the creation of an article.
“What they know is that [for] anything that appears under their byline, they’re responsible for its veracity, for the credit it gives to others, etcetera. There’s no such excuse as: ‘Oh, AI wrote that.’”
Ignatius added: “Now more than ever, they are on the line. You can’t say ‘don’t use it [AI]’… I mean, that’s not practical now. So it’s all about responsible use and taking responsibility for what comes out.”
Harvard Business Review has also been using AI for some backroom tasks, for example translations and “atomising some content from bigger chunks of text into shorter-form multimedia” or reformatting it into podcasts. The brand also has a prototype “HBR AI” that helps make the website’s content searchable.
The organisation does not have a deal with any AI companies at the moment, Ignatius said.
“We would consider it. We’re keeping our options open, but we would certainly consider something engaging with somebody that truly valued our content.”
HBR editors’ advice to the news industry: ‘Get over’ disdain for the business side
Asked what worried her the most about the journalism industry as she took over the reins at the magazine, Bernstein said: “There’s no one thing, to be honest with you. A lot of stuff worries me.
“The proliferation of ‘good enough’ content out there, much of it AI-generated, [and] more, undoubtedly, to be gen-AI-generated.
“I do think that we have an edge there, and I do think that we’ll see it play out, because people will need stuff they can trust. And so I think that the trust that people have in our brand will carry through.
“I worry about a world where people’s attention span is shrinking and I want to make sure we stay ahead of that and that we continue to serve our subscribers in the most effective possible ways, recognising that their behavior is evolving.
“The world is moving fast, and it’s kind of hard to keep up. I do think about that a lot – is there anything we could skip doing so that we could serve people better?”
Bernstein and Ignatius are not just editors but editors of the world’s most famous management publication. To that end, what management tips would they impart to the rest of the news industry?
“I was with other journalistic organisations before HBR, and I have to say we never took any of this stuff seriously,” Ignatius said.
“Journalists are iconoclasts and are rebels and they’re good when they challenge authority. That translated into, in my experience at the places I worked before, a disdain for – everything. For processes, for strategy.
“In our heyday, the established media organisations, they worked. We had readers, we sold advertising, and the model was fine. It’s challenging now.
“So I guess my advice would be this stuff that seems almost anathema to the ethos of a journalist – challenging authority, not doing anything according to what’s expected. Yeah, maybe get over that.”
Bernstein agreed: “It’s important to understand management. It’s also important to understand the business side.
“It’s not just that they’re your colleagues – the church-state divide is important, and I would never want to erase that line. But understanding how the business functions – the business model, the operating model – is an important thing for journalists to take on board.”
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