How School of Rock Created Structure in Order to Scale with Agility and Creativity

In the summer of 2021, School of Rock was a youth-oriented music education company with 291 franchise- and company-owned schools globally. Before Rob Price became CEO in 2017, School of Rock’s nonconformist culture led to variability in teaching styles, educational outcomes, and risks for copyright violations. One of Price’s major initiatives to aid better standardization was the Method App which provided a structure to empower and guide work at the school branches, featuring nearly 100 show programs and 1,000 copyright-compliant song choices tagged with the associated skill levels, musical concepts, and corresponding show programs. When the app launched in 2019, it struggled to gain traction. Some franchisees felt the functionality was flawed; others worried that the app threatened their pedagogical independence. Harvard Business School Professors Tatiana Sandino and Jeffrey Rayport joined host Brian Kenny and School of Rock leaders Stacey Ryan, President, and Rob Price, Former CEO for a live taping of Cold Call on the HBS campus. They discussed the case, “School of Rock: Tuning into Structured Empowerment,” and explored how they chose to drive adoption of the Method App across its franchisees without reigniting tensions with the corporate office.