Name: Ahead of the Curve
ISBN: 9781594201752

Ahead of the Curve

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.

What Hacker News says

abakkerMar 2017

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Persig Why We Make Things, and why it Matters, Korn Ahead of the Curve, Broughton Hell's Angels: a strange and terrible saga, Thompson]

All changed my thinking about things for different reason, but shared the common theme of making me think more about every idea I have.

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davidwMar 2009

This would be a good place to mention a book I enjoyed reading recently:

"Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School" https://www.amazon.com/dp/1594201757?tag=dedasys-20 (yes, it has my affiliate link)

It's written by a pleasantly cynical, yet curious Englishman. It's pretty interesting to hear about the whole experience, the mindset, and some of the people involved. A particularly relevant (for me) passage:

"Rubenstein looked like any other Wall Street elder statesman, in a blue pinstriped suit and owlish tortoiseshell glasses. But the moment he spoke, eh revealed a droll, self-deprecating wit. The difference between corporate leaders and those who start their own businesses, I had observed, was startling. The latter come across as so much smarter and independent-minded, so much less prone to platitudes, so much more comfortable in their own skins. There seems to be an anarchic streak in anyone who has taken a real risk in his life. And even when it has to burn its way through a pinstriped suit, it shows."

That sort of hints at one of the "problems" with teaching business - there's lots of useful stuff you can learn, but there is also some natural, innate talent there, that doesn't necessarily correspond to doing well at an MBA course. So perhaps it's best to get out there, get some experience, and then just do it.

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thinkcompFeb 2009

HBS has an Entrepreneurship Club which holds a yearly Entrepreneurship Conference, and it is definitely part of the curriculum, but in the past the real emphasis has been on assimilating MBA students into mainstream corporate culture, and not as much on starting new businesses. That may change now that the economy has shifted somewhat dramatically.

Anyone interested in HBS should read Philip Delves Broughton's book "Ahead of the Curve" about his experience there.

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dzinkNov 2013

Yes, I think I red it in "Ahead of the Curve" ( http://www.amazon.com/Ahead-Curve-Harvard-Business-School/dp... ) and the author backed it up with data from the most recent tech and financial bubbles. The exact quote escapes me.

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