CHAPTER 1

Who Should Read This Book?

Each year, from the ivy-covered halls of Harvard and Wharton and the sun-drenchedcampuses of Stanford and USC to the intellectual vineyards of France'sINSEAD, the fabled London School of Business, and the teeming campus of HongKong University of Science and Technology, more than 100,000 students graduatefrom full or part-time regular and executive MBA programs. As Table 1-1indicates for a typical year, this is more than three times the number of lawdegrees, more than four times the number of engineering degrees, and more thanseven times the number of medical degrees.

There is a very good reason why the Masters of Business Administration (MBA)degree is so popular. The big questions that are addressed, the key conceptsthat are taught, the skills that are honed, the tools that are developed, andindeed the wisdom that is conveyed in the core MBA curriculum provide businessexecutives from all walks of life and in every layer of management with the mostpowerful arsenal of analytical weapons ever assembled to fight the corporatewars.

The purpose of this book is to attempt the near impossible: compress thesequestions, concepts, tools, skills, and wisdom into one of the most useful andeminently readable management books ever assembled.

Ultimately, you will be the judge as to whether the crack team of businessschool professors that I have assembled to write this book are up to the task.But my promise to you is this: we are going to give you our absolutely besteffort in illustrating, in the most practical of terms, just how useful the corecurriculum elements of the MBA degree can be in your everyday business life. Asfor who should read this book, we have at least four different audiences inmind.

First, you may be considering pursuing an MBA degree and may want to learn moreabout the degree. This book will show you how the typical MBA curriculum isorganized along "bread and butter" functional areas such as accounting, finance,and marketing, "toolbox" topics such as managerial economics and decisionmodeling, leadership topics such as organizational behavior, and the broaderstrategic areas of macroeconomics and corporate strategy.

Secondly, you may have already applied and been accepted to an MBA degreeprogram. Accordingly, you may want to get a leg up on your classroom competitorsby familiarizing yourself with the subjects you will be studying as well as thestyle in which the material will be presented. In fact, this book absolutelyexcels at this task because of its "big picture" approach to the core curriculumand coursework.

Thirdly, you may be close to graduating or have already graduated from an MBAdegree program. However, you may now realize that many of the concepts, tools,and skills that you acquired during your studies have begun to grow a bit fuzzy.This book can serve as both a capstone to your MBA experience as well as a handylittle reference volume to keep near your desk.

Finally, you may already be a busy and seasoned business executive who hasalways wanted to go back and get your MBA degree but never had the time. You mayhave pressing family commitments. You may have too many responsibilities withinyour company to afford the time to go back to school. Or, no doubt in somecases, you simply do not want to incur what is typically a very hefty expense.If any of these particular shoes fit you, the good news here is that this bookcan serve as a very able substitute for the physical classroom. In this regard,the always down-to-earth and often entertaining conversational lecture style ofeach chapter will get you as close to being in an MBA classroom as you can getwithout actually sitting in a seat!

That said, I want to be lightning quick in pointing out that this book can neverbe a perfect substitute for the MBA experience. Indeed, there are at least twomain benefits that every good business school serves up to its students. Thefirst, of course, is the set of key concepts, tools, and skills that wehopefully will convey quite ably in this book. The second, however, is theinvaluable set of networks that most students develop as part of their MBAexperience. For many MBA graduates, these networks turn out, over time, to bealmost as valuable as the knowledge embedded in the degree itself.

With that caveat, I now urge you to plunge into these pages with the greatestenthusiasm and intellectual curiosity that you can muster. Indeed, I hope youwill be as excited about reading these pages as the absolutely top-notchprofessors within these pages have been motivated to bring you this book.

CHAPTER 2

The Big Picture—An Overview of the MBA Curriculum

In both business and in life, I have always found it useful to first look verycarefully at the forest before examining each of the individual trees. That isprecisely the philosophy we are going to use in this book as we begin, in thischapter, with a big picture overview of the MBA core curriculum. Then, insucceeding chapters, and with the help of some of the top business professorsfrom schools around the world, we will look much more closely at each of thecourses in that curriculum.

USING A "CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK"

Let us start, then, by looking very carefully at the list of core MBA courses inthe conceptual framework in Table 2-1. The conceptual framework is one of themost common learning devices you will encounter in business school.

This particular conceptual framework provides an overview of the MBA corecurriculum at the "Top 50" business...