Anita Elberse is the Lincoln Filene Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.

Professor Elberse develops and teaches an MBA course covering the "Businesses of Entertainment, Media, and Sports," which ranks among the most sought-after and longest-running elective courses in the School’s curriculum, and chairs a short executive education program, also named "The Business of Entertainment, Media, and Sports." She further chairs a semester-long mentoring program, "Crossover Into Business," that is specifically designed for professional athletes. In partnership with Mercedes Formula One team principal Toto Wolff, she has developed a short course for MBA students on "High Performance Management: Leading a Formula One Team." She has received teaching awards on multiple occasions from both the Harvard Business School and its students, including the Charles M. Williams Award for excellence in teaching, "Best of EC Year" honors (for top faculty teaching in the Elective Curriculum), and the Faculty Teaching Award. She has also won the "Outstanding Case Teacher" award in The Case Centre's worldwide competition, also known as "business education's Oscars."

In her research, Professor Elberse primarily aims to understand what drives the success of products in the entertainment, media, sports, and other creative industries, and how firms can effectively manage products and talent in such sectors. She is acclaimed for her work on digital-media strategies, the power of superstar talent, and leadership and team management, and she frequently uses econometric modeling techniques to examine media-industry problems. Her work has been published in the Harvard Business Review, Marketing Science, the Journal of Marketing, and several other journals. She was named a Marketing Science Institute Young Scholar, and served on the editorial board of Marketing Science.

Professor Elberse has conducted case studies on dozens of entertainment companies, personalities, and other entities. These include record label A&M/Octone Records, cable operator Comcast, book publisher Grand Central Publishing, Broadway show Hamilton, online video provider Hulu, music streaming serviceSpotify, the campaign for Jay-Z's book Decoded by advertising agency Droga5, entertainment companiesLive Nation, Marvel Enterprises, NBCUniversal and The Walt Disney Studios, nightlife business Marquee, the Metropolitan Opera, sports leagues MLB and the NFL, MRC's television series House of Cards, Shonda Rhimes' production company ShondaLand, Jason Blum's Blumhouse Productions and Ava DuVernay's Array, soccer clubs AFC Ajax, FC Barcelona, Boca Juniors, Paris Saint Germain and Real Madrid, NBA team the Milwaukee Bucks, the ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament, World Wrestling Entertainment, soccer coach Sir Alex Ferguson and Formula One team principal Toto Wolff, Voguemagazine, fashion house Burberry, sports apparel brand Nike, and superstars Giannis Antetokounmpo, David Beckham, Beyoncé, BTS, Roger Federer, Lady Gaga, Chip and Joanna Gaines, LeBron James, Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, MrBeast, Francis Ngannou, Ninja, Mohamed Salah, Maria Sharapova, Dwyane Wade, and Pharrell Williams. Several of these case studies are described in her bestselling first book, Blockbusters: Hit-making, Risk-taking, and the Big Business of Entertainment, which Amazon named one of its Best Books of 2013.

Prior to joining Harvard Business School, professor Elberse was a Visiting Fellow at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. She holds a PhD from London Business School, an MA in Communication from the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California, and an MA in Communication Science from the University of Amsterdam (cum laude). A native of The Netherlands but now an American citizen, she was awarded a Netherland-America Foundation/Fulbright Fellowship.

Professor Elberse is one of the youngest female professors to have been promoted to full professor with tenure in Harvard Business School's history.