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Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School By Philip Delves Broughton ( Penguin Press HC, The )
Release Date: 2008-07-31
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Product Description
As One L did for Harvard Law School, Ahead of the Curve does for Harvard Business School—providing an incisive student’s-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 HBS’s plush campus. Over the next two years, he and his classmates would be inundated with the best—and the rest—of American business culture that HBS epitomizes. The core of the school’s curriculum is the “case”—an analysis of a real business situation from which the students must, with a professor’s 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 Liar’s 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 school’s success at teaching the traits it extols as most important in business—leadership, 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.
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 Excellent Read ( jwp29304 )
I'll keep my review brief as there are already several excellent reviews below that capture the book excellently. This is a charming account of the author adventures at HBS, I found the book excellently written. This is definitely a page turner, I read it in 3 sittings and found myself laughing out loud many times. I think this book would be valuable to anyone attending any MBA program, not just HBS. Its been my experience that many of quirky personality that Phillip writes about are present in most business schools.
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an interesting book ( jianchen )
I found this book very interesting. It gives a different view of the current business world from a HBS student's point. The author used many examples and incorporated the ideas and thoughts of many famous business people. You may agree or disagree with his opinions but they are worthy reading.
The book talked about leadership, risk taking, ethic, extreme leverage and other aspects of the business world. Those are the authors observation or quotations of the professors or those famous business people. I felt that I was getting a free seminar on the pratice of the business world in U.S.
There are many details of the day-to-day life of HBS students, those are supposed to be smartest, brightest, and most successful people wanting to be a businessman. The book is full of interesting descriptions of events and conversations happened in HBS. It gives you a peek of what is there for those smart and ambitious people. You may feel that you are there with them and keep imagining what it would feel like if you are one of them.
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Eye opener
While the author drips the customary cynicism of a journalist, the insights were revealing. The real challenge is just getting into HBS. Once there, it's all gravy. I also found his perspective on how this effort impacted his family interesting.
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Dissident Dispatches from America's Iconic Capitalist Boot camp ( geezerjock )
Ex-journalist turned MBA jock Philip Delves Broughton aims for the business stars as he gains acceptance to Harvard Business School in this first-person account. As a French correspondent for the London Daily Telegraph, Broughton has an eclectic and "liberal artsy" background which differs from many of the hard core business and "quant" types who are his classmates.
Broughton offers genuine insights on this Berlitz-like total immersion into graduate business study, striving and struggling to maintain personal balance with his wife, two young kids and his ambivalence over the myopic chase for a big-bucks job.
"Ahead of the Curve" is an interesting read, and Broughton never does seem to completely drink the Kool-Aid that intoxicates so many of these Masters of the Financial Universe. The boom will be interesting to those who:
* Have a notion to try to shoot for HBS
* Those who are interested in an MBA program and want some insights on what it is like
* Those interested in an inside look at the most famous boot camp of graduate business education
In the end, Broughton - even armed with a Harvard MBA - struggles to find a job, just the right job. He has a wry sense of humor, perspective and does not let the Harvard Business School experience go to his head. As a writer, he is "ahead of the curve:" and I would recommend this book for one perspective on HBS and the demands, perils and rewards of an MBA education.
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ahead of the curve but behind the 8-ball ( thebookcat )
I had to give the book 5 stars because I couldn't put it down and because it was so thought-provoking.
I can't help comparing is book to Robert Reid's earlier book, Year One. Reid describes professors and fellow students more vividly than Broughton does. But Broughton seems to be describing an HBS that has changed since Reid's day. Reid didn't refer to expensive (and apparently useless) group trips, tasteless pranks and parties and psychological tests. HBS seems to have more students with military background as well as a higher number of twenty-somethings.
Of course, a big difference is that Reid actually understood and enjoyed business careers. As a career consultant, I was intrigued by Broughton's lack of direction and even more appalled by HBS's apparent lack of career and interview coaching.
For instance, Reid's book, Year One, described a female student who wanted to work for a small firm -- the kind that didn't recruit at HBS. She did her research, initiated an interview process, and found a job. Why didn't Broughton do that? And why didn't he study marketing, which would be closer to his journalism background, instead of finance? In fact, HBS was all wrong for him. He could have chosen Wharton, which has a big entrepreneurial center, or Northwestern, the marketing giant.
I hate expressions like "alignment of goals and values," but the book inadvertently presents a clear case of incongruence. In one disturbing paragraph (p 117), Broughton writes that, "business can never escape the fact that it is the practice of potentially thieving, treacherous, lying human beings." But what element of society is exempt from being practiced by people have might steal and lie? Michael Nifong prosecuted innocent Duke students -- causing enormous financial and personal loss -- to further his own career. He is not unique Doctors are seduced by pharmaceutical companies. A specialist at my college reunion said, "I have to perform a certain exam on pre-surgical patients. Often I find they don't need the surgery and I say so. So surgeons don't send me referrals." As for government...are our fearless leaders really free of greed?
At least we have consumer protection laws. We have far fewer protections in any other sector. More important, if Broughton despises business, he will have trouble finding success there.
Harvard does seem to waste a lot of the students' tuition money. I was especially horrified to discover that HBS endorses the Myers-Briggs test. Broughton devotes a lot of speculation to a value system that explains why so many Fortune 500 companies use Myers-Briggs. The real problem is that the test has no scientific value. Might as well use astrology. I recommend The Cult of Personality, by Annie Murphy Paul, published just before Broughton entered Harvard.
I won't comment on the "be your best self" exercise. In Year One they just built towers out of paper and cardboard.
Apart from describing what one learns at HBS, Broughton ultimately shows that if you're a maverick a prestigious MBA won't mold you into a corporate success story. That's a lesson I've learned myself, all too well.
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