Episode 49: Is Harvard Making Conjugal Visits?

It is September 7th and this is the MBA SHOW!

i am lieutenant MBA - Sean Bonawitz

and i am International MBA of mystery - Stav J. Davis

We usually save our Business-Porn section for the end of the show but this is just too huge!

What is it?

HBS is in love with Bernie Madoff!

What??

yes - the New york Times finally got HBS to admit that an "anonymous" professor is working with the Wall-street con on a case study based on this life.

have they got no shame??

I actually think its brave of them to look the root of the problem in the eye.

Well, to me it seems like a populist move. it smells bad.

Well, I think this is out of the box thinking of HBS part. In any case, I have the feeling a big storm is brewing around this story.

Anyway - on to our main topic: B-school branding vs. reality!

Many times b-schools brand themselves very aggressively around a certain message, but how does that message come out in practice?

Well, lets take a look at the recent hot topic of entrepreneurship. Many schools brand themselves as entrepreneurship meccas, but a new study published by poetsandquants.com may suggest otherwise.

They used 120 million linked in profiles to measure how many graduates of each b school actually went on to found a company. And the results are:

1. Stanford
2. Harvard
3. MIT-Sloan
4. Haas
5. Tuck

Wow. I didn't think of Harvard and Tuck as entrepreneurial.

yes. There are no surprises with Stanford and MIT, but HBS and Tuck are a positive surprise. on the other side of the scale we have Babson which only reached number 8 on this ranking and Kellogg which isn't even in the top 10.

Babson always emphasizes it's entrepreneurial direction, but this study shows it may be no more than a successful copyrighting campaign.

But then again - this study may be skewed too. You have to really look into the data to know the truth.

So - our tip of the week should be pretty obvious - don't listen to slogans! Go search for the raw quantitative data concerning your areas of interest! And don't rely only on one data point like this survey - because it may be flawed. This is your life - don't let people control it with creative branding.

So - Stav, what are you up to this weekend?

i'm going to try to license a patent for my startup. What about you Sean?

I'm going horseback riding in Maine!

Great! I am Stav j. Davis - international MBA of Mystery.

And I am Sean Bonawitz - Lieutenant MBA, and you've been watching -

THE MBA SHOW!!!