Cirque du Soleil: product innovation and financial contagion

Leslie E. Palich and Marlene M. Reed-Hislop

Chapter 3 in Cases on Corporate Entrepreneurship in North America, 2025, pp 21-37 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This case tells the story of Cirque du Soleil, an innovative circus that gained prominence in the early 2000s and faced possible bankruptcy in 2020. The organization was launched based on the vision of Guy Laliberté, a Canadian who loved show business and wanted to start a circus of his own that featured animal-free creative circus acts. After high school, he hitchhiked through Europe and developed skills in fire breathing and stilt walking. He began Cirque du Soleil with a group of friends in 1984. The circus had excellent growth and financial success until it began offering more options for shows and took on greater debt to finance their creation. By 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic had spread around the globe, the current CEO, Daniel Lamarre, recognized that it would be difficult for the company to survive since governments everywhere were shutting down all businesses. As the company was forced to shutter all of its performances worldwide and nearly all at once, he wondered what he could do to save the company.

Keywords: Cirque du Soleil; Circus; COVID-19; Innovation; Leverage (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781803929224
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