Teaching Strategic Management Through Music

There is a moment in every strategic management course when students understand the words—cost leadership, differentiation, trade-offs—but still struggle to recognize strategy when they see it in practice. They can define “stuck in the middle,” yet fail to diagnose it in real firms. That gap between knowing and judging is where strategy education often stalls.To address this, I began experimenting with an unconventional but surprisingly effective approach: teaching strategy through music, using a structured listening-and-reflection assignment.This is not a metaphorical exercise. It is a concrete learning design that replaces slides with sound—and forces students to hear strategic failure before they analyze it.The Assignment Design: Strategy as a Listening ExerciseThe activity is intentionally simple and sequential.Step 1: ListenStudents begin by listening to a short song titled “Stuck in the Middle.”Stuck in the MiddleThe song narrates a firm that is trying to appeal to everyone, chasing multiple advantages at once, and slowly losing its identity.There are no definitions.No frameworks mentioned explicitly.Just a story told through rhythm, repetition, and frustration.Step 2: ReflectImmediately after listening, students respond to a structured discussion prompt:* Based on the song, describe the type of company being portrayed.* What is the firm trying to do strategically?* Why is this firm considered “stuck in the middle”?* Use one specific idea or lyric from the song to support your answer.* If you were advising this firm, what ONE strategic choice should it make to escape the middle (cost leadership or differentiation)?* Briefly explain why.That’s it. No case packet. No external reading required at this stage.Why This Works PedagogicallyThis design forces several important learning moves that traditional lectures often fail to trigger.First, diagnosis before labels. Students must infer the firm’s strategy from behavior and outcomes, not from a predefined category. Only after reflection do we connect the song back to formal strategy concepts.Second, constraint-driven thinking. The requirement to recommend one strategic choice mirrors real strategy. Students cannot hedge. They must commit.Third, evidence-based reasoning. By requiring a specific lyric as support, the assignment reinforces the habit of grounding claims in observable signals—an essential strategic skill.Most importantly, the song makes the idea of being “stuck in the middle” felt. Confusion, drift, and inconsistency are not abstract—they are audible. Students recognize the tension intuitively before articulating it analytically.What Students Reveal in Their ResponsesStudent reflections consistently identify patterns such as:* Trying to compete on both price and quality* Chasing too many customer segments* Lacking a clear value proposition* Reacting rather than choosingWhat is striking is that students often reach these insights before naming the framework. The song becomes a diagnostic tool, not a summary device.Later, when Porter’s ideas are formally introduced, students do not ask, “What does this mean?” They ask, “Is this what we heard in the song?”That reversal matters.Music as a Carrier of Strategic JudgmentThis exercise does not replace theory or cases. It prepares students for them.Music acts as a carrier—compressing strategic logic into a form that is memorable, repeatable, and emotionally resonant. The goal is not entertainment. The goal is judgment.If strategy is about making hard choices under constraints, then teaching strategy should expose students to those constraints early and often—even if that means stepping outside traditional pedagogy.Sometimes, listening carefully is the first strategic act.If you teach strategy and have never tried letting students hear a strategic failure before analyzing it, this experiment is worth attempting. One song. One concept. One choice.That is often enough to change how students understand strategy. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit strategyliteracy.substack.com/subscribe