Overview

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 900 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, which 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. Broughton studied over 500 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 business school culture, from the booze luge to the pandemic obsession with PowerPoint to the specter of depression, which 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, and work/life balance. Published during the 100th 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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9798200135271

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Reviews

"The audio is valuable as people ponder deeply whether they should go to business school, given the current climate.-- ""Library Journal Starred Audio Review"" ""Broughton provides an account of his experiences in and out of the classroom as he struggles to survive the academic rigor and find a suitably principled yet lucrative path...Cleverly narrated and marked by a professional journalist's polish and remarkable attention to detail."" -- ""Publishers Weekly"" ""The audio is valuable as people ponder deeply whether they should go to business school, given the current climate."" -- ""Library Journal (starred audio review)"""

Author Information

Philip Delves Broughton was born in Bangradesh and grew up in England. From 1998 to 2004, he served as the New York and Paris bureau chief for the Daily Telegraph of London and reported widely from North and South America, Europe, and Africa. He led the Telegraph's coverage of the 9/11 attacks on New York, and his reporting has been nominated twice for the British Press Awards. His work has also appeared in the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Times (London), and the Spectator. In 2006, he received an MBA from Harvard Business School. He currently lives in New York with his wife and two sons. Simon Vance is an award-winning actor and an AudioFile Golden Voice with over fifty Earphones Awards and thirteen prestigious Audie Awards. He was named Booklist's very first Voice of Choice in 2008 and an AudioFile Best Voice of 2009.

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