Ahead of the Curve

　　商學院學生笑中帶淚的必讀作品
　　一本價值臺幣六百萬的哈佛商學院生存手冊

　　百年哈佛商學院，學費要價臺幣六百萬，也是全球商界最具影響力的教育機構。領導力、決策力、企業倫理、工作與生活的平衡等，被認為是哈佛商學院的成功祕密。哈佛MBA，是人生的天堂口，還是不快樂的工廠？誰可以擠進窄門，邁向頂尖之路？

　　給是MBA以及不是MBA的讀者

　　三十一歲那年，我放棄原來的工作，去念哈佛MBA。

　　人們念MBA的理由各有不同，不過大概可以分為兩種：前者清楚知道自己接下來要走什麼路、要做哪種工作，而後者則不那麼清楚。後者雖然知道自己想要改變，但卻不清楚是什麼樣的改變。我就是第二種人。      作者／菲利浦．戴爾夫．布羅頓

　　揭開名校面紗，第一手見證哈佛教育商業菁英的方式。

　　金融海嘯讓華爾街灰頭土臉，過去人人欽羨的MBA被譏笑為「準備吃苦吧」（more bitterness ahead），然而也因為金融海嘯失業潮，讓更多人回去讀MBA，認為MBA可以增加就業價值。到底MBA在念什麼？進名校如哈佛商學院，就是拿到金鑰匙嗎？依據調查，《財星》五百大企業，有兩成執行長畢業自哈佛商學院，這家百年老店，每年有九百個新生懷抱著成功致富的夢想入學報到。

　　哈佛商學院出過最有智慧的企業家，如政商得意的紐約市長彭博，也有最狡詐的騙徒，如安隆執行長斯基林，虧空公司四百億美元，如今遭判刑二十四年又四個月，然而最頂尖的投資銀行與證券商每年還是急著把明日之星往這裡送，要學習哈佛商學院的成功祕密。

　　作者原為英國倫敦《每日電訊報》記者，因羨慕富豪生活，辭職進入哈佛商學院就讀，MBA教育的種種震撼讓他大開眼界，兩年下來作者至少做過五百個案例研究；另外作者也提到哈佛不為人知的一面，像是飲酒作樂，作PowerPoint的偏執，許多壓力過大的學生甚至罹患了憂鬱症，深刻描繪邁向頂尖之路的人生抉擇。

　　★本書中譯本《邁向頂尖之路：哈佛商學院的人生習題》由時報出版

　　As One L did for Harvard Law School, Ahead of the Curve does for Harvard Business School-providing an incisive student’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 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 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 that 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. 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 Liar’s 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 school’s success at teaching the traits it extols as most important in business-leadership, decisiveness, ethical behavior, work/life balance.

作者簡介

菲利浦．戴爾夫．布羅頓  Philip Delves Broughton

　　出生於孟加拉，之後成長於英國，布羅頓於一九九四年畢業於牛津大學新學院，二○○六年取得哈佛商學院MBA學位。一九九八至二○○四年間，布羅頓先後擔任倫敦《每日電訊報》紐約及巴黎辦事處主任，曾在南北美洲、歐洲與非洲等地採訪，他主筆的九一一特別報導，獲得英國新聞獎（British Press Award）。與妻兒現居於紐約。

　　Philip Delves Broughton was born in Bangladesh and grew up in England. From 1998 to 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 Award. His work has also appeared in the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Times of London, and Spectator. In 2006, he received an MBA from Harvard Business School.