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Blue Man Case Study Essay

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REV: JANUARY 6, 2012

BHASKAR CHAKRAVORTI
JANET KRAUS
SHIRLEY M. SPENCE

Blue Man Group: Creativity, Life and Surviving an
Economic Meltdown
1

Sometimes when we look at where Blue Man Group has gone; we just sort of scratch our heads. And we think about how we started, basically just the three of us saying, “Why don’t we get bald and blue and do stuff?” — Chris Wink, co-founder with friends Matt Goldman and Phil Stanton
Monday evening on July 7, 2008, Chris, Matt and Phil were slumped around a conference table littered with leftover sushi boxes, and sales and financial reports. Their CFO had just left the room. It was clear they were in a red ink-black ink situation; they could go under. It was frightening to …show more content…

They had begun a journey they never could have foretold, opening shows in Boston, Chicago,
Las Vegas, and Orlando; taking their theatrical show to audiences internationally; making albums and staging rock concerts. An estimated 17 million people had enjoyed their shows by mid-2008, paying $43 to $131 for the experience.4 Along the way, CMP became husbands and fathers, and launched an educational venture called the Blue School that embodied their spirit of creativity and collaboration.5 And they loved it all.

Before They Were Blue
In 1987, Chris, Phil and Matt found themselves in their mid-20s, sharing an apartment in New
York City, each quite different but all in search of a creative outlet. Matt had once read that life was a succession of hitting plateaus right when you needed to meet a person or form a relationship to move to the next level. “That was our experience,” he said. Phil was the relative newcomer to the group;
Matt and Chris had a history that extended back to high school.
Matt was born into a fourth-generation New York City family, his mother a writer and teacher, and his father a documentary film maker. He attended public elementary school, which he described as “a big institution with no soul,”6 and then the Fieldston High School, a private institution. He recalled his high school years:

I was lucky to get into Fieldston at all. My test scores were so-so; I later found out I was borderline dyslexic. But the application

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