Synopses & Reviews
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 worldIn 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.
Review
" Destined to become required reading for prospective B-school entrants. . . . As an insider's account of an influential institution, [it] hits every mark."
-San Francisco Chronicle
"An insightful and entertaining, behind-the-scenes glimpse at a powerful institution."
-BusinessWeek
" What makes this a particularly absorbing and entertaining read is the combination of journalistic detachment and the sense of personal alienation that Delves Broughton, a Brit in an American system, feels as he struggles to come to terms with what it means to be a Harvard MBA."
-Financial Times
Review
“Best book on sales ever? Who knows, but it surely is the best I’ve ever read. As a gazillion-mile traveling salesman (ideas) myself, I learned an amazing amount about who I am and what I do from this. We all live by selling: ideas or products or peace in our time. The Art of the Sale is perhaps unique—a marvelous book about selling, and life, and who we are and how we tick. And the case studies are dazzling.”
Review
“For the author, sales is where the rubber hits the road, where the deals are done . . . Broughton has met with top sellers around the world, traveling to Japan, Morocco, and the United Kingdom in search of the keys to success in sales . . . Entertaining, balanced, and provocative.”
Review
"Broughton, promoting the idea that sales is a virtuous calling . . . makes an appealing, contrarian pitch."
Review
"A descriptive account . . . long overdue."
Review
“Like Malcolm Gladwell, Delves Broughton is drawn to success stories where natural talent takes second place to hard work, but he’s also willing to explore the manipulative, deceptive aspects of the task, as well as the endless rejection salespeople must face. His enthusiasm and admiration for skilled practitioners of the art is contagious.”
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
Two years in the cauldron of capitalism-"horrifying and very funny" (The Wall Street Journal)In this candid and entertaining insider's look at the most influential school in global business, Philip Delves Broughton draws on his crack reporting skills to describe his madcap years at Harvard Business School. Ahead of the Curve recounts the most edifying and surprising lessons learned in the quest for an MBA, from the ingenious chicanery of leveraging and the unlikely pleasures of accounting, to the antics of the "booze luge" and other, less savory trappings of student culture. Published during the one hundredth anniversary of Harvard Business School, this is the unflinching truth about life in the trenches of an iconic American institution.
Synopsis
From the author of Ahead of the Curve, a revelatory look at successful selling and how it can impact everything we do The first book of its kind, The Art of the Sale is the result of a pilgrimage to learn the secrets of the world's foremost sales gurus. Bestselling author Philip Delves Broughton tracked down anyone who could help him understand what it took to achieve greatness in sales, from technology billionaires to the most successful saleswoman in Japan to a cannily observant rug merchant in Morocco. The wisdom and experience Broughton acquired, revealed in this outstanding book, demonstrates as never before the complex alchemy of effective selling and the power it has to overcome challenges we face every day.
About the Author
Philip Delves Broughton was born in Bangladesh and grew up in England. From 1998-2004, he served successively 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 twice been nominated for the British Press Awards. His work has also appeared in the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Times of London, and the Spectator. In 2006, he received his MBA from Harvard Business School. He currently lives in New York with his wife and two sons.