The title of Philip Delves Broughton’s Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School was interesting enough to jump on my reading list but when I began to see his book mentioned in blogs and on twitter I pulled it from my wish list and dropped it into my cart. It was not a mistake. The opportunity to learn about the life of a Harvard MBA candidate is a pretty interesting read.
Broughton is the former Paris bureau chief for The Daily Telegraph of London. His writing was easy, flowing and pleasant. Broughton was also very human in his approach to writing about the elite training ground for the high stress world of finance, venture capital and banking.
Broughton was also able to describe those MBA alums who spoke of those demands and losing wives and children to the long hours of business. It was a bit odd to read that more than a few alums went through the divorce process four times.
Worse yet was those few who admitted their own children did not know who they were due to those demanding hours. Most wanted their MBA to provide for their family while in fact they were losing touch with them in the process…all for the glory of wealth and fame.
And yes it was interesting to hear how his class of 2006 could land $400,000 jobs, his thirteen interviews with Google were pretty demanding.
In the end he skipped his graduation on a rainy Saturday in to take his infant son to his favorite Boston spot for cannoli. At one point in my life I would have ridiculed this man for skipping his Harvard commencement. For $175,000 (minus his new BMW — see below) you better be sure I would show up come rain or snow for that moment. Today with two small children and a backdrop of a soggy event on Harvard Square I kinda understood his decision.
I was impressed with his review of their first year known as RC: required cirriculum. The demands of Harvard’s case studies was rather impressive as their main tool for teaching. And from the looks of it those case studies required round the clock research and planning. The feel of his fellow students all aiming for post Harvard success was an interesting read, especially from the foreign students. Most of his fellow students agreed they did not want to be called upon to review a case study. The demands were extremely high and Broughton described a couple of painful episodes of his participation and those by his fellow students.
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by donkasprzak •
Posted in Design • Education • Globalization • Google • Green • Innovation • Reading
Tagged banking, BMW, borderless world, broughton, case studies, competing in a flat world, daily telegraph, elite training, flat, flat world, future, Google, harvard business school, harvard commencement, harvard mba, jobs, losing touch, mba candidate, research, singapore, venture capital
My TED favorites
My latest read – Remix
Regrettably the Vancouver Olympics interrupted my reading pattern and its been a slow recovery. I blogged about this book as soon as I learned it was in production back in August. Yikes!
His latest book Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy is a very easy read for anyone who has also known his work. He tells an important story about how new technology is clashing with old money.
Lessig illustrates how copyright’s old money (the big media empires) are clashing with today’s society and technology. Old money is winning financial amounts here and there, but ultimately they are cutting their own throat as they can no longer control content. Their motto: since we cannot have it our way anymore (due to the easy distribution of digital content) we are going to sue as many people as we can and take outrageous amounts of money along the way.
Lessig simply points out the two different camps: Read-only versus Read-Write. Look at popular consumer phones and computers. Today anyone can create a short video and post it to YouTube. And by today’s “standard” in social networking — your somewhat expected to post multimedia content on Facebook and YouTube for example.
But post a 29 second video of a baby dancing to Prince’s Lets Go Crazy and Universal Music (they own Prince and his music) files a lawsuit claiming copyright violations. Its old money trying to control society and Lessig points out it clearly no longer works.
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by donkasprzak • Comments (0)
Posted in Audio • Design • Education • Globalization • Google • Innovation • Reading • Rich media • TED • Technology • Web2.0
Tagged art and commerce, control content, copy, copyright, creative commons, digital culture, economy, Education, education business, larry lessig, media content, media empires, monetary gain, multimedia content, Network, old money, riaa, society, technology leaders, TED, universal music, unprecedented growth, youtube