Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School

As One L did for Harvard Law School, Ahead of the Curve does for Harvard Business School—providing an incisive studentÂ's-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 HBSÂ's plush campus.