Ahead of the Curve
Ratings3
Average rating4.3
15
Ratings3
Average rating4.3
In the century since its founding, Harvard BusinessSchool has become the single most influential institution inglobal business. Twenty percent of the CEOs of Fortune 500companies are HBS graduates, as are many of our savviestentrepreneurs (e. g. , Michael Bloomberg) and canniest felons(e. g. , Jeffrey Skilling). The top investment banks and brokeragehouses routinely send their brightest young stars to HBS togroom them for future power. To these people and many others,a Harvard MBA is a golden ticket to the Olympian heights ofAmerican business. In 2004, Philip Delves Broughton abandoned a postas Paris bureau chief of the London Daily Telegraph to join ninehundred other would-be tycoons on HBS’s plush campus. Overthe next two years, he and his classmates would be inundatedwith the best—and the rest—of American business culture thatHBS epitomizes. The core of the school’s curriculum is the“case”—an analysis of a real business situation from which thestudents must, with a professor’s guidance, tease lessons. DelvesBroughton studied more than five hundred cases and recountsthe most revelatory ones here. He also learns the surprisingpleasures of accounting, the allure of “beta,” the ingenious chicaneryof leveraging, and innumerable other hidden workingsof the business world, all of which he limns with a wry clarityreminiscent of Liar’s Poker. He also exposes the less savory trappingsof b-school culture, from the “booze luge” to the pandemicobsession with PowerPoint to the specter of depression thatstalks too many overburdened students. With acute and oftenuproarious candor, he assesses the school’s success at teachingthe traits it extols as most important in business—leadership,decisiveness, ethical behavior, work/life balance. Published during the one hundredth anniversaryof Harvard Business School, Ahead of the Curve offers a richlydetailed and revealing you-are-there account of the institutionthat has, for good or ill, made American business what it istoday.
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This book was, unfortunately, rather disappointing. As a graduate of the University of Denver's MBA program, I was excited to read this book because I'd hoped it would glean some insight into the highly selective, greatly sought after experience at HBS. Although Broughton gave a fair amount of that, it was often punctuated by long stretches of academic material that seemed ripped from a business textbook. I suppose that one should expect some material like this, given that Broughton is recounting his experiences in business school; however, a true account of “Two Years at Harvard Business School” would, I think, focus a bit more on Harvard itself and not devote multiple pages to an explanation of Michael Porter's numerous frameworks.
