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Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School | 
| Author: Philip Delves Broughton
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $7.45
You Save: $18.50 (71%)
Rating:  37 reviews
Sales Rank: 7145
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.1
ISBN: 1594201757
Dewey Decimal Number: 650.07117444
EAN: 9781594201752
ASIN: 1594201757
Publication Date: July 31, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| 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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 32 more reviews...
Dissecting the HBS brand, with love December 23, 2008
D. Kumar
The most influencial academic institution whose alums control the flow of billions (trillions, as corrected by one HBS student) of dollars in the global economy, has many faces. The author takes us through a campus tour and tells us a story. A story about the wild parties, the academic rigor, the intellectual stimulants. Also the moral dilemma, insecurity, mindless rat race and a quest for self discovery. Getting into HBS is hard, but harder is to stay true to one's primal instincts and beliefs once inside the system. HBS claims to explain 'how the world works', but we learn that at times it probably couldn't be farther away from the world outside. It is a witty, thought provoking account of soul-searching. If you are considering applying to HBS, read it to get an idea of the curriculum, the professors and the cases - if nothing else. Because chances are, HBS would soon strip you of your inner emotions and turn you into a conformist foot-soldier of American capitalism, no matter how hard you were warned before.
 Worth Buying! December 15, 2008
MEJ (Seattle, WA USA)
My local libraries have both the PDF and audiobook format editions via Overdrive, of this book, and I have consumed both. I might have even bought it here given the necessity, in retrospect! In addition to Amazon's HQ, the Seattle area has good library systems!
What did I miss by not being at HBS? I have a few inclinations here. However, the way things are done there makes me glad I am back on the West or Left Coast, despite having spent 2/3 of my life on the East after being born in California.
I hope the author is earning enough to pay down his self-reported loan debt of $175,000.00 he obtained to attend the grand institution.
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