Everyday Reading

serenacl

August 4th,2010
感觉这篇套路像G，筒子们可以一睹
A post-crisis case study

后危机案例研究


The new dean of Harvard Business School promises “radical innovation”

哈佛商学院的新院长承诺要“激进变革”


Jul 29th 2010



HENRY KISSINGER, who started his career in the killing fields of Harvard before moving to Washington, DC, is said to have quipped that academic politics are vicious precisely because the stakes are so small.
Schumpeter has no idea whether the contest to succeed Jay Light as dean of the Harvard Business School (HBS) was vicious. But he is sure that the stakes were not small.




在到华盛顿特区以前，亨利·基辛格在竞争激烈的哈佛开始他的职场生涯，据说他曾讽刺学院政治特别邪恶，因为无需承担太多风险。熊彼特不清楚，接替Jay Light成为HBS院长一职的竞争是否邪恶，但估计承担的风险不会太小。




HBS is hugely influential. The school is a training ground for America’s business elite: a striking number of the top office holders of Fortune 500 companies, including the heads of General Electric and Boeing, sharpened their skills and elbows there. The school is also the apex of the vast global industry devoted to teaching business. It sits on an endowment of $2.1 billion and employs some terrific thinkers, including Michael Porter and Clayton Christensen. It developed the “case method”—using case studies to teach students about real-world business problems. It claims to be the source of four-fifths of the case-study materials used in the world’s leading business schools.




哈佛商学院有着不同凡响的影响力。这是美国商业精英的训练基地：绝大部分财富500强公司的高层管理人员，包括通用电气和波音公司，都曾在此磨练他们的技能和手腕。它是全球商业教育产业中的巅峰，拥有21亿美元的捐款，雇佣迈克尔·波特、克莱顿·克里斯汀生这类的学术大佬。它也发展了“案例方法”——使用案例研究来教给学生关于真实世界中的商业问题。据他们自己说，在全世界顶级商学院中使用的案例研究材料有八成是源自哈佛。




The past decade, however, has not always been glorious for the school. Global business has been rocked by crises, from Enron to the financial meltdown. HBS, alas, played a role. Enron was stuffed with HBS old boys, from the chief executive, Jeff Skilling, downward. The school wrote a sheaf of laudatory case studies about the company. Many of the bankers who recently mugged the world’s taxpayers were HBS men. George Bush learned to be a “decider” at HBS.




不过，近十年来，HBS没有保持过去那般光彩。全球商业遭受各种冲击，从安然到金融危机。HBS不幸也在其中发挥作用。从首席执行官Jeff Skilling直到以下各级，安然遍布着HBS的老校友。HBS也编写过成堆的对安然公司大加溢美之词的案例。近来许多搜刮纳税人的银行家就是HBS人。乔治·布什也是在HBS学会了成为一个“决策者”。




On July 1st, a new dean, Nitin Nohria, took charge. His appointment suggests that the school sees the need for a shake-up. Mr Nohria is the first HBS dean who was not born in North America. He is also the first who has come to the job having said that business faces a “crisis of legitimacy” and that business education is at an “inflection point”. Mr Nohria believes that HBS is on the cusp of “a period of extraordinary innovation”. But what does he mean by innovation? Are his ideas sound as well as stirring? And what chance does he have of prodding a lumbering giant such as HBS in the direction that he wants it to go?




7月1日，新院长尼汀．诺瑞亚上任接管工作。他的任命表明学院看到了需要大变革。诺瑞亚先生是首位不在北美出生的院长。他也是首位接管此工作，但又说商业面临着“合法性危机”、“商业教育面临着拐点”的人。诺瑞亚先生相信HBS正处在“重大创新期”的前沿位置。但是他要用创新来表明什么？他的理念有听上去那么激动人心吗？他有哪些机会把HBS这样一个笨拙的巨人推往他设想好的方向？




Mr Nohria’s first task is to try to restore faith in business in general and in business schools in particular. This means improving two things, he reckons: “competence” and “character”. He wants the faculty to focus more on the risks of clever financial techniques; they will have plenty of case studies to choose from. He also wants HBS to renew its commitment to shaping its students’ characters as well as their intellects. He has long argued that business people should regard themselves as members of a profession. He supports a movement by students to adopt a business equivalent of the Hippocratic oath.




诺瑞亚先生的首要任务是要让人们恢复对一般商业的信心，特别是对商学院的信心。这意味着改善两件事情：他认为是“能力”和“个性”。他希望教学人员聚焦于聪明的财务技巧会带来的风险；他们将有足够的案例可供挑选。他也希望HBS重新定位使命，应该既塑造学生的智力，也塑造学生的性格。他一直在论证商业人员应该把自己看成是职业成员。他支持学生发起的一个运动，即通过一个商业上的希波克拉底誓言。


In our cynical age, Mr Nohria’s willingness to talk about shaping character is admirable. But his obsession with “professionalisation” and “Hippocratic oaths” is puzzling. The moral values that business people should adhere to are universal ones, not a professional code. Business progresses through creative destruction, not through the application of rules. The movement for a Hippocratic oath for business is already running out of steam.




在我们这样一个玩世不恭的年代，诺瑞亚先生愿意谈论改造性格，这令人钦佩。但是他对“职业化”和“希波克拉底誓言”的痴迷有点让人不解。商业人员认同的道德价值应该是普世性的，而非职业准则。商业进步是通过创造性的破坏，而不是遵循规则。商业中的希波克拉底誓言运动已经不管用了。




Mr Nohria is more persuasive as an evangelist than as a psychopomp. No one will be shocked to hear that the dean of Harvard Business School believes that business is the world’s greatest generator of prosperity and solver of problems. But Mr Nohria sells the idea skilfully. He has written extensively on the history of American business, so he has a wealth of anecdotes about its ability to rebound. That he was born in India lends weight to his argument that business is quite good at tackling poverty. Mr Nohria can also cite copious examples of how fancy management theories that were cooked up in business schools—from microfinance to re-engineering—can boost growth and spread prosperity around the world.




比起作为超度者，诺瑞亚先生更像是一个雄辩的传福音者。当听到HBS院长认为商业是这个世界上最伟大的繁荣制造器和问题解决者，没人会大惊小怪。但诺瑞亚先生能够娴熟地兜售这些观念。在美国商业史方面他著述广泛，关于美国商业起死回生的能力，他有一大把奇闻异事可以讲述。他的印度出身也帮他论证：商业特别能克服贫困。诺瑞亚先生也能够引证大量的事例，说那些商学院炮制出的花哨理论——从小额信贷到再造工程——能够在这个世界上推进增长，传播繁荣。




Students get their boots dirty




让学生“试水”





Mr Nohria’s other great passion is for super-charging innovation at HBS. This will involve making the school even more globally connected than it already is: one of Mr Nohria’s first acts as dean was to embark on a whistle-stop tour of the world’s business hot-spots. More ambitiously, he wants to rethink the school’s hallowed teaching methods. Since the 1920s, HBS students have pored over case studies of business decisions. The new dean wants them to take part in live case studies—to take themselves to the Midwest or Mumbai and spend time working for real companies. This answers one of the most persistent criticisms of business education: that it is too abstract. Mr Nohria wants his students to get their boots dirty.




诺瑞亚先生的另一个巨大热情就是在ＨＢＳ进行强力革新。这将包括：使学院更加国际化，尽管它已经非常国际化了。诺瑞亚先生上任的第一个动作就是着手到全世界的商业热点做一次巡游。更具雄心的是，他试图反思已被神圣化的教学方法。从１９２０年代以来，HBS的学生就埋头案例研习来来学习商业决策。新的院长希望他们参与更为鲜活的案例研究——把他们带到中西部或者是孟买，花上一段时间在真正的公司里工作。这回应了一个长久以来就存在的批评：商业教育太抽象了。诺瑞亚先生希望他的学生去“试试水到底有多深”。


None of these “innovations” is entirely original. Most European business schools are already much more globalised than HBS. France’s INSEAD has opened a campus in Singapore to put it at the heart of the Asian miracle. Many business schools started experimenting with “live case studies” long ago: the late C.K. Prahalad was particularly successful in finding plum assignments at interesting Indian firms for his University of Michigan students.




这些“创新”没有一个是完全原创的。许多欧洲商学院已经比HBS更加全球化。法国的欧洲工商管理学院在新加坡开设一个校区，以打入亚洲奇迹的心脏。许多商学院很早就开始了“生动案例教学”：晚年的C.K. Prahalad就特别善于为他的密歇根大学学生寻找有趣的印度公司，给他们布置令人神往的作业。


Nevertheless, HBS plays a vital role in making good ideas stick. People listen when its star professors speak. Its case studies often become conventional wisdom. It confers ex cathedra legitimacy on anything it touches: Schumpeter was struck by how many Indian entrepreneurs proudly presented him with HBS case studies about their companies. As the ultimate insider-outsider, Mr Nohria is better placed than most to continue with the reforms that have been gathering pace for a while. The 20th century belonged to America. The next one probably won’t, so HBS will find it harder to stay on top. But in choosing an articulate Indian-American for its top job, the school at least gives a sense that it understands how big the task will be.




然而，HBS在使好理念真正起作用方面扮演最关键的角色。当他们的明星教授说话时，大家都会聆听。它的案例研究也常常成为通识性的智慧。它给予任何它触及到的东西最终权威的合法性。熊彼特经常被搞的很困惑，印度企业家总是呈给他HBS关于他们公司的案例研究材料。作为一个最终的内部的外来人，诺瑞亚先生比任何其他人都更适合于这个位置，来推进暂时已有所前进的改革。20世纪属于美国，21世纪可不一定。HBS会发现要保持在顶峰会非常难。但选择一个能言善辩的印裔美籍人来做院长，商学院至少给人一种感觉：它懂得这个任务的重大。

alanuonuo

先占个楼，有空儿来看～