|
| Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School | 
 enlarge | Author: Philip Delves Broughton
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $15.04
You Save: $10.91 (42%)
New (21) Used (4) from $15.04
Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 196
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 304
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 1594201757
Dewey Decimal Number: 650.07117444
EAN: 9781594201752
ASIN: 1594201757
Publication Date: July 31, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20080817214304T
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
As One L did for Harvard Law School, Ahead of the Curve does for Harvard Business Schoolproviding an incisive students-eye view that pulls the veil away from this vaunted institution and probes the methods it uses to make its students into the elite of the business world
In the century since its founding, Harvard Business School has become the single most influential institution in global business. Twenty percent of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are HBS graduates, as are many of our savviest entrepreneurs (e.g., Michael Bloomberg) and canniest felons (e.g., Jeffrey Skilling). The top investment banks and brokerage houses routinely send their brightest young stars to HBS to groom them for future power. To these people and many others, a Harvard MBA is a golden ticket to the Olympian heights of American business.
In 2004, Philip Delves Broughton abandoned a post as Paris bureau chief of the London Daily Telegraph to join nine hundred other would-be tycoons on HBSs plush campus. Over the next two years, he and his classmates would be inundated with the bestand the restof American business culture that HBS epitomizes. The core of the schools curriculum is the casean analysis of a real business situation from which the students must, with a professors guidance, tease lessons. Delves Broughton studied more than five hundred cases and recounts the most revelatory ones here. He also learns the surprising pleasures of accounting, the allure of beta, the ingenious chicanery of leveraging, and innumerable other hidden workings of the business world, all of which he limns with a wry clarity reminiscent of Liars Poker. He also exposes the less savory trappings of b-school culture, from the booze luge to the pandemic obsession with PowerPoint to the specter of depression that stalks too many overburdened students. With acute and often uproarious candor, he assesses the schools success at teaching the traits it extols as most important in businessleadership, decisiveness, ethical behavior, work/life balance.
Published during the one hundredth anniversary of Harvard Business School, Ahead of the Curve offers a richly detailed and revealing you-are-there account of the institution that has, for good or ill, made American business what it is today.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 The essense of business education August 20, 2008
A definite must read for anyone thinking about going into MBA program. This book is highly intelligent, very entertaining and true to the soul (if there is one) description of "experiential" learning which forms the core of HBS case-based education.
It also can serve as a quick refresher on major topics, from corporate finance to negotiations techniques. It even has few good hints for solving classical business cases which are studied practically at all business schools. I wonder if that would cause an ethical problem, though. However, the author should be congratulated for this fine work.
 This book is a joke! August 18, 2008
2 out of 12 found this review helpful
Not only is this book written to amplify the negative and hide the positive, but the author's entire experience seems predicated on looking for one-off stories to write about his classmates. It's not only not the full-story, but also misleading to the point of being a fairytale. Perhaps next time the author is unhappy with his own life he should focus on actually trying to improve it, not on cutting down the successes of others.
 Behind the curve? August 16, 2008
16 out of 19 found this review helpful
I was interested right away in this book because I taught at Columbia Business School several years ago, and wondered if the same crazing, hard-driving lifestyle existed at other ivy-league schools. Delves Broughton is brutally honest in this insider's look at Harvard's B school, including his admission that he never got a job offer after his 2 year stint (which may explain his cynicism).
He wrote his book when the school was headed up by devote Mormon economist Kim Clark, who has since left for another challenge -- making Ricks College (now called BYU-Idaho) into a top rated 4-year college.
His main conclusion is that MBA students at Harvard are insecure overachievers and "a factory of unhappy people" who, when they graduate, work too much at their jobs and don't spend enough time with their families and outside interests (p. 268) He said most of the famous CEOs who came to speak at Harvard were successful in business but failures in their home live (multi-divorces). On p. 270, he tells the story of a Goldman Sachs exec who came to Harvard to talk about leadership and values, and then confessed he had four ex-wives. However, he fails to mention that dean Clark has managed to have a successful career and a good family life with seven kids and a loving wife.
I'm citing the page numbers because shockingly this book, published by Penguin, doesn't have an index. Talk about behind the curve!
If you want to know what the author thinks of dean Kim Clark, go to pp. 5-6, 19-20, 28, 85-86, 111, 164, and 208. "Clark has whittled his life down to just four things: work, family, faith, and golf." (p. 85)
As far for his suggestions for improvement at HBS (at the end of the book), I thought he had some good ideas. One was that professors who teach entrepreneurship should not be pure academics but practitioners who have had lots of real world experience. Amen. I found that at Columbia B school, over half the professors had no experience running companies, and the micro they used for microeconomics was a standard micro text, not a managerial econ textbook.
The reason for this strange situation is that years ago top B schools decided they should compete with top academic departments by hiring PhDs who write abstract papers in top journals rather than running successful businesses.
The other major drawback to today's top B schools is that they don't teach hardly any history of finance or business, other than case studies (and those are usually from the recent past). Robert Heinlein wisely said, "He who refuses to study history has no past and no future."
What a sad commentary on today's ivy-league B schools. Fortunately, other B schools, such as Acton and Market-Based Management at Wichita State do teach applied courses by practionioners, not just academics.
The author cites a delightful statement by Jack Welch when he visited HBS: "Government generates no revenues. Government lives off taxes generated by business and people that work in business. Don't ever forget that." (See p. 233)
I could find only one sin of omission: Broughton never discussed the "Biggie" course at HBS, the macroeconomic course on "Business, Government and International Economics."
And one sin of commission: I liked his writing style, but he overdid the use of 4-letter words and vulgarities. Isn't it a sad commentary on the business, finance and academic world that top graduates can't control their tongue?
Sour grape book..... August 10, 2008
7 out of 62 found this review helpful
As you know, the French culture is different from ours. In Paris, you pass by the street cafe. Three Frenchmen debated with one another at 10 am. By 4 pm, there are still there debating on the same subject. Any time you said something good, then the French will say it is bad, or vice versa. The whole country is generally negative toward anything that is American.
I taught two groups of French college students in New York (40 total). They claimed that the French fashion and wine were the best. They are very proud to be French. Coming to USA for jobs? No way, over their dead body!
The author has a good job in Paris. He came to HBS for two years of study. He never tried to fit in. He was always a French. He spent a lot of money, made sacrifice, and got his MBA. He was interviewed at McKinsey and Google. Guess what, he did not fit in. I am not surprised.
What else can he do? Of course, write a book to vent his anger.
Go back to Paris. We do not need another bashing French in this country.
Wonderful for Anyone Thinking about getting an MBA August 8, 2008
6 out of 14 found this review helpful
A must read for anyone thinking about getting an MBA. It will give you an idea of what things will be like.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
