Admissions Q&A: Maryland

Smith is looking for applicants who are "hungry for an MBA degree," says admissions director Sam Kang 

Sam Kang says there are many reasons to pursue an MBA at the University of Maryland's Smith School of Business (Smith Full-Time MBA Profile). Kang, director of admissions and recruitment for Smith's full-time MBA program, points out that the school is located near Washington, a thriving metropolitan area. And he says that its small full-time MBA program—about 150 students per class—creates an atmosphere of collaboration among students.
Kang expects getting into Smith to become more difficult in the coming years as applications to the school continue to increase. Candidates who want to get into Maryland should think carefully about their career goals and how a Smith MBA could help achieve them, Kang told Bloomberg Businessweek's Zachary Tracer in a recent interview. In the interview, Kang discussed how applicants can put together a strong application and described changes to the school's Career Resources Center.
Here is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Are there any big changes or others things individuals should be aware of if they choose to apply to Smith?
We have not made a drastic change. We are predicting for next year that applications will go up; I think they are on an upward trend. We don't sit around and try to find [reasons] to deny people, but we really try to find in an applicant reasons to admit them. And I think from that principle [that] the students need to go about trying to [distinguish] themselves in every aspect of the application. Definitely, I think it will become more competitive.
Can you tell me about what makes someone a good fit for a Smith MBA?
First and foremost, we want to find someone who is hungry for an MBA degree in general and clearly knows what an MBA will do for their career. They are going from point A to point B and we want to really be that bridge. So I think they need to really convey to us [that] they are hungry for this degree. I think it's someone who is really passionate about what they are doing and how this relates to their studies here at the Smith School of Business.
Why should someone consider Maryland's Smith School?
One of the greatest assets that we have is that we are just outside of Washington—that entire area can be your classroom. Washington right now is one of the most diversified places in terms of job function. It's an area where corporate and government intersect, where for-profit and nonprofit intersect. Second is the tremendous research that the University of Maryland does. And [third] is the community that we create of students that [is] really collegial. The students are not cutthroat but really watch out for one another. I'm really proud of the community we have created here and I think that is one of the best assets in an MBA education because it is really learning about how to function in a team.
Does Smith have any set minimums for GMAT scores or years of work experience?
The bottom line is the student should understand when they should get an MBA. So I've had experiences where there is a student with 15 years of work experience and they feel like, "Oh, I'm ready." And when I interview them, he or she is still not ready. And then there are students with one year of work experience [who are] quite ready. In terms of the GMAT, again there is no minimum score but our average this year will be about 670. Eighty percent of our applications are [from] about a 610 to a 740. They should try to fall in that range.
Could you tell me a little bit about how interviews work at the Smith school?
When a candidate submits an application, we go through a first read. And then if you pass that, we will invite that candidate for an interview. Treat it like a job interview. Come prepared, come dressed business formal, really be yourself. We really want to know who you are because an interview is as important as submitting your application. Up until the interview we just know you on paper, but an interview could—let's say you're borderline—it could make or break [your acceptance].
Do you have any tips for students working on the application essays?
I cannot say it enough: Write what you are passionate about. That sounds really clichéd, but it is true. You should not write your essay thinking [about] what we want to hear. First, really understand your goals—why you want to get an MBA. Secondly, an essay is where you can do some minor things with maximum impact—submit an essay that has no spelling or grammatical errors. We are reading close to a thousand applications, and just imagine I come to your application on a Friday afternoon. I'm pretty much out the door at five o'clock and I come to your application at 4:30 and your essays have grammatical errors, spelling errors—that's just not good. I know many of the applicants are applying to more than one school. They try to fit one answer to several questions and [then] they don't answer the question. You have to answer the question.
How about letters of recommendation—do you have any advice for students as they go about choosing their recommenders?
First and foremost they need a person that really knows them. The best person is your direct boss. If you have the opportunity to tell the boss you are leaving and that situation is okay, you should sit down with your boss and say, "You know, I really want to get this degree and this is my career progression." There are situations where you cannot tell your boss because you don't want to jeopardize that relationship until you are sure you got into a school. Then maybe you want to go to your previous boss or a client. If that is not [possible], then maybe you have extracurricular activities. Maybe you work for Habitat for Humanity and you are under a great leader. We want to see a recommendation where someone will vouch for your character, your work ethic, how you work and things like that. I would not get it from a professor because we really want to see [you in] a professional setting.
Can you give me an example of a Smith student who is not a typical MBA?
This woman, she was a documentary filmmaker in New York. She was more on the creative side of things [and] she really wanted to get an MBA to get formal training in business and go into consulting. It was a jump, she worked very hard at it from the get-go through internships. Now she has been hired by Booz Allen and she's a management consultant.
What efforts have you made to recruit minorities and women into the program?
We do a slew of tours to attract people from diverse backgrounds. We have a diversity-at-Smith event. We utilize our student clubs, we have a Hispanic club, a Black MBA club, an LGBT club—and those are all interconnected. The bottom line is, when we craft a class, we want to give each student the best experience they can get within a class. For them to experience that, I think it is the admissions and recruitment team's responsibility to craft a class that is diverse in its female-male ratio, ethnic minorities, and international ratio.
Have there been any changes to the curriculum recently or are any coming soon?
We introduced a new curriculum two years ago, really settling upon the infrastructure of globalization, entrepreneurship, and technology. At that time, we cut down 14-week classes into seven-week classes so that people could take more classes. We are going to introduce an opt-in venture track now—[students] are going to be partnered with one of our centers for research and excellence and they will do research into a certain business area. They will have to take a global study trip and they have to be involved in a social responsibility nonprofit.
Can you tell me about any changes that the school is making to help students find jobs in light of the current economic situation?
The key word is diversification. Five, ten years ago, students came in pretty set on certain positions. [Now] you need to come with a plan B, maybe even a plan C. Maybe your dream job might not be within reach, but you could go to another job as a stepping-stone to your dream job. [Career services] is doing a major reorganization in terms of what we want to give to the students. Up until a year ago, we had general career coaches. But we figured recruiters are looking for more specific things, so we have hired many career advisers already and we are naming them as expert industry specialists. We have five expert industry career specialists and those are in consulting, finance, marketing and consumer goods, nonprofit marketing and so forth, and also in the technology sector. So if a student comes into our MBA program and they are interested in consulting, they will be matched up with our expert industry specialist in the consulting arena.
Are there any common misconceptions about the Smith School of Business that you'd like to dispel?
We were one of the premier schools with our tagline "leaders for the digital economy." And I think about 10 years ago when that happened, everybody thought that our MBA was kind of a techno-MBA. That wasn't the point. The point was, we realized technology could make a huge difference in many areas of an MBA education. The bottom line is how can technology help your business, your MBA.

http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/sep2010/bs2010091_391590_page_2.htm

 

Why good bosses tune in to their people

Know how to project power, counsels Stanford management professor Bob Sutton, since those you lead need to believe you have it for it to be effective. And to lock in your team’s loyalty, boldly defend their backs.

Bosses matter. They matter because more than 95 percent of all people in the workforce have bosses, are bosses, or both. They matter because they set the tone for their followers and organizations. And they matter because many studies show that for more than 75 percent of employees, dealing with their immediate boss is the most stressful part of the job. Lousy bosses can kill you—literally. A 2009 Swedish study tracking 3,122 men for ten years found that those with bad bosses suffered 20 to 40 percent more heart attacks than those with good bosses.
Bosses matter to everyone they oversee, but they matter most to those just beneath them in the pecking order: the people they guide at close range, who constantly tangle with the boss’s virtues, foibles, and quirks. Whether you are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or the head chef at a restaurant, your success depends on staying in tune with the people you interact with most frequently and intensely.
All bosses matter, but those at the top matter most. Whether or not they know it, their followers monitor, magnify, and often mimic their moves. I worked with a large company where the CEO did almost all of the talking in meetings, interrupted everyone, and silenced dissenting underlings. His executive vice presidents complained about him behind his back, but when he left the room, the most powerful EVP started acting the very same way. When that EVP left, the next-highest-ranking boss began imitating him in turn.
The ripple effects of this CEO’s style are consistent with findings from peer-reviewed studies showing that senior executives’ actions can reverberate throughout organizations, ultimately undermining or bolstering their cultures and performance levels. When CEOs have far more pay and power than their direct reports do, for instance, performance can suffer if their subordinates feel they can’t stop them from making and implementing lousy decisions. A few years ago, I did a workshop with a management team struggling with “group dynamics” problems. Team members felt that their boss, a senior vice president, listened poorly and “ran over” others; he called his people “thin-skinned wimps.” I asked the team—the senior vice president and five direct reports—to do an exercise. The six of them spent 20 minutes brainstorming potential products and then narrowed their choices to the most feasible, the wildest, and the most likely to fail.
As they brainstormed, I counted the number of comments made by each team member and the number of times each interrupted someone else and was interrupted in turn. The senior vice president contributed about 65 percent of the comments, interrupted others at least 20 times, and was never interrupted. When I had him leave the room, I asked his subordinates to estimate the results, and they did so accurately. Then the senior vice president returned. He recalled making about 25 percent of the comments, interrupting others perhaps 3 times, and being interrupted 3 or 4 times. When I showed him the results and explained that his direct reports had estimated them far more accurately, he was flabbergasted and annoyed.
Being a boss, as this exercise shows, often resembles the role of a high-status primate: your subordinates watch you constantly, so they know more about you than you know about them. Likewise, anthropologists who study chimpanzees, gorillas, and baboons report that followers devote far more attention to their leader than he devotes to them. (Studies of baboon troops show that typical members glance at the dominant male every 20 or 30 seconds.) As Princeton University psychologist Susan Fiske observes, primates—including ourselves—“pay attention to those who control their outcomes.”
Linda Hudson, CEO of BAE Systems, got this message after becoming the first female president of General Dynamics. After her first day on the job, a dozen women in her office imitated how she tied her scarf. Hudson realized, “It really was now about me and the context of setting the tone for the organization. That was a lesson I have never forgotten—that as a leader, people are looking at you in a way that you could not have imagined in other roles.” Hudson added that such scrutiny and the consequent responsibility is “something that I think about virtually every day.”
The best bosses work doggedly to stay in tune with this relentless attention and use it to their advantage. They are self-absorbed, but not for selfish reasons. On the contrary, they know that the success of their people and organizations depends on maintaining an accurate view of how others construe their moods and moves—and responding with rapid, effective adjustments.
That view is invaluable for bosses as they try to carry out their first and most important task: convincing others that they are in charge. Bosses who fail to do this will find their jobs impossible, their lives hell, and their tenures short. Of course, taking charge effectively isn’t enough. The best bosses also boost performance by watching their people’s backs: making it safe for them to learn, act, and take intelligent risks; shielding them from unnecessary distractions and external idiocy of every stripe; and doing hundreds more little things that help them achieve one small win after another—and feel pride and dignity along the way.

Taking control

James Meindl’s research on “the romance of leadership”¹ shows that leaders get far more credit—and blame—than they deserve, largely because, cognitively, it is easier and more emotionally satisfying to treat leadership as the primary cause of performance than to consider the convoluted and often subtle mishmash of factors that actually determine performance differences. It is especially difficult to resist demonizing the bosses of failing organizations, however irrational that may be. This bias toward glorifying and vilifying individual leaders (and downplaying the role of systems, collective action, and external factors outside management’s influence) is especially strong in the United States and many European nations.
 
Yet the best evidence shows that bosses rarely account for more than 15 percent of the gap between good and bad organizational performance—although they often get more than 50 percent of the credit and blame. If you are a boss, this is your lot in life; make the best of it. If you claim that you don’t have much influence over what happens to the team or company you lead, your people will lose confidence in you and your superiors will send you packing. Here are four suggestions for magnifying the illusion of control (for more ideas, see the sidebar, “Tricks for taking charge”):

1. Express confidence even if you don’t feel it

In 2002, I heard Andy Grove, Intel’s legendary CEO (1987–98), interviewed by Harvard University’s Clay Christensen, who asked Andy how leaders can act and feel confident despite their doubts. He answered, “Investment decisions or personnel decisions and prioritization don’t wait for that picture to be clarified. You have to make them when you have to make them.” That’s why executives need to use what I call the faking-it-until-you-make-it strategy, which he also touched on: “Part of it is self-discipline, and part of it is deception. And the deception becomes reality. It is deception in the sense that you pump yourself up and put a better face on things than you start off feeling. But after a while, if you act confident, you become more confident.”²
Research showing that “belief follows behavior” supports his argument. And confidence is especially crucial for inspiring your followers, because like all emotions, it’s contagious—especially when displayed by closely scrutinized bosses.

2. Don’t dither

Indecision, delay, and waffling are the hallmarks of a crummy boss; the best ones know that crisp and seemingly quick decisions bolster the illusion (and reality) that they are in charge. As late stage director Frank Hauser said, “You have three weapons: ‘Yes,’ ‘No,’ and ‘I don’t know.’ Use them. Don’t dither; you can always change your mind later. Nobody minds that. What they do mind is the two minutes of agonizing when all the actor has asked is, ‘Do I get up now?’”

3. Get and give credit

A great thing about being the boss is that when your people do good work, you usually get too much of the credit. Smart bosses often use this to their advantage, knowing that people want to work for and do business with winners.
As a boss, you may already use subtle tactics to get credit, such as collaborating with people who are likely to praise you (so that you don’t have to brag) and, when you do mention your accomplishments, giving copious credit to others. David Kelley, the modest chairman and founder of design firm IDEO, is a master of the art of giving his people credit. I believe that one reason IDEO became a renowned innovation firm under David’s leadership is that he relentlessly thanks others for making him look good, gives them credit when the company does something great, and downplays his contribution—something I have observed him do hundreds of times over the past 15 years.
Indeed, the best bosses routinely give their followers more credit than they probably deserve. And when bosses do this, everyone wins. As the boss, you will get the lion’s share of credit because of the romance of leadership. Your immediate team will regard you as truthful. And your modesty and generosity will be admired—especially by outsiders, who will see you as both competent and generous.

4. Blame yourself

In August 2008, I listened on the radio as Maple Leaf Foods CEO Michael McCain made a statement about the deaths and illnesses traced to tainted meats produced by one of his company’s plants. McCain’s voice quivered as he announced its closure, apologized to the victims, and said that the people at Maple Leaf—including himself—were responsible and that it was his job to restore faith in the company.

His response is striking because it is so rare yet so consistent with research on how to fuel the illusion (and reality) that the boss is in charge. Unlike many people in such a predicament, McCain accepted the fact that he would be held responsible for what his people did, no matter what. When something important happens, the boss is expected to know. Rather than blaming others, McCain understood it was wiser to accept the blame and learn from it. Leaders who denounce outside forces for their troubles come across as disingenuous and powerless. By refusing to take responsibility, they implicitly raise a damning question: “If you didn’t have the power to break it, how can you have the power to fix it?” The public also sees a boss’s refusal to accept responsibility as a sign that nothing has been learned from the errors.
If you as a boss want to enhance the perception that you are in charge—and fuel performance at the same time—taking at least some of the blame is usually necessary. Experiments by University of Michigan professor Fiona Lee and her colleagues show that managers who take responsibility for problems like pay freezes and failed projects are seen as more powerful, competent, and likeable than those who deny responsibility. In another study, Lee’s group examined stock price fluctuations in 14 companies over 21 years. They found that when top executives accepted responsibility for problems, stock prices were consistently higher afterward than when CEOs denied responsibility.
The key, though, is not just to accept blame and apologize. You must also take immediate control in whatever way you can, show that you and your people have learned from failure, announce new plans, and, when they are implemented, make sure everyone understands that things are improving because of them—just as Michael McCain did. Although no one can predict his company’s ultimate fate, the Canadian press praised McCain for his clarity, compassion, and control. A nationwide survey in December 2008 showed that among Canadians, confidence in the Maple Leaf brand had risen to 91 percent, from 60 percent, since August of that year. Although the company reported losses in 2008, it returned to profitability in 2009. As McCain said in February 2010, “The packaged-meats business continues to recover. Our brands and our reputation are intact”³—an assessment most analysts and customers echoed.

Bolstering performance

Bosses who ignore and stomp on their subordinates’ humanity sometimes generate quick gains. But in the long run, such short-sightedness usually undermines their followers’ creativity, efficiency, and commitment. The best bosses focus on boosting the performance of their people through stratagems such as the three that follow:

1. Provide psychological safety

Good bosses spark imagination and encourage learning by creating a safety zone where people can talk about half-baked ideas, test them, and even make big mistakes without fear of ridicule, punishment, or ostracism. I witnessed the power of psychological safety at a large media company where a new CEO was determined to drive out fear. A vice president had launched a magazine that ended up being an expensive, well-publicized flop. She would have been demoted and fired—and probably publicly humiliated—under past regimes. Instead, the CEO spoke at a gathering and congratulated her for her courage and skill. He emphasized that the decision to start the magazine wasn’t just hers; senior management had backed it. After his speech, every executive I spoke with portrayed the CEO’s comments as a watershed event.
An absence of psychological safety, in concert with fear of the boss, can be dangerous or downright deadly. Studies by Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson and her colleagues show that when nurses fear their supervisors will punish and humiliate them for making mistakes, they hesitate to report their drug-treatment errors. The hazards of fearing authority also emerge from research with commercial pilots in flight simulators. One study showed that when pilots faked mild incapacitation toward the end of a rough and rainy simulated flight, their copilots failed to take the controls 25 percent of the time—resulting in simulated crashes. The copilots knew the pilots were incapacitated yet failed to question their authority. Dysfunctional deference can kill real flight crews and passengers too. In 1979, a commuter plane crashed, in part, because the second officer failed to take control when the captain, a vice president known for gruffness, became partly incapacitated.

2. Shield people

The best bosses invent, borrow, and implement ways to reduce the mental and emotional load heaped on their followers—and protect them from the incompetence, cluelessness, and premature judgments of fellow bosses or others who can undermine their followers’ work and well being. Followers who enjoy such protection (and who may be bosses themselves) have the freedom to take risks and try new things.
Annette Kyle, for example, managed some 60 employees at a Texas terminal where they loaded chemicals from railcars onto ships and trucks. In the mid-1990s, Annette led a “revolution” that dramatically raised her unit’s performance through a host of changes, including better planning, greater responsibility at the lowest levels, improved and more transparent metrics, and numerous cultural changes. She personally sewed “no whining” patches on workers’ uniforms, for example, to discourage the local penchant for complaining and auctioned off her desk to workers for $60 because, as she explained it, “I shouldn’t be sitting behind a big desk. I should be contributing to team goals however possible.”
This transformation virtually eliminated the penalties that were levied when ships arrived at the terminal’s dock but (despite considerable advance warning) workers weren’t ready to load them. These “demurrage charges,” which cost the company $2.5 million the year before the revolution, were down to $10,000 the year after. Previously, it had taken more than three hours to load an average truck. Afterward, more than 90 percent were loaded within an hour of arrival. Surveys and interviews by University of Southern California researchers showed that employees became more satisfied with their jobs and felt proud of their accomplishments. I asked Annette how she could make such radical changes in her giant company. She answered that her boss shielded her from top-ranking managers—he found the resources and experts she needed but never discussed these moves with senior management until they succeeded.
Good bosses are especially adept at protecting their people’s time—for example, by eliminating needless meetings. Take a cue from Will Wright, designer of computer games such as The Sims: rather than automatically scheduling meetings, ask yourself if they are really needed. Wright employed a clever trick. Every time someone called a meeting, he charged that person a dollar. Although he collected a lot of dollars, this requirement made people “think twice, even though it was only a dollar.” He also used an employee-centered method to keep meetings short—inviting the creative but impatient artist Ocean Quigley, “the canary in the coal mine.” When Quigley raised his hand to be excused, “we knew that the meeting had hit diminishing returns.”

3. Make small gestures

The late Robert Townsend, CEO of Avis and author of the masterpiece Up the Organization, called the phrase “thank you” a “really neglected form of compensation.” The broader lesson for bosses is the importance of “the attitude of gratitude,” a line borrowed from Kimberly Wiefling, founder of Wiefling Consulting, who argues that too many projects end without acknowledgement and celebration and that whether a project succeeds or fails, the best managers take time to express appreciation. Conveying this attitude is especially crucial when the stench of failure fills the air—precisely the time when people most need support from the boss and one another. Bosses with the will and the skill to provide that kind of support set the stage for learning from fiascos. Unfortunately, too many bosses have the opposite response and use such occasions to conduct “blamestorms” or “circular fire squads,” where the goal is to point fingers, humiliate the guilty, and throw a few overboard.
Good bosses don’t just get more from their people and do it in more civilized ways; they attract and keep better people. If you think your employees are deadbeats, downers, and jerks, look in the mirror. Why don’t the best people want to work for you? Why do people who appeared to be stars when they joined your team seem to turn rotten?
Of all the skills and aspirations good bosses must have, self-awareness is probably the most important. Cornell University’s David Dunning has shown that poor performers consistently overestimate their intellectual and social skills. In contrast, the best performers accurately judge both their strengths and their flaws. Dunning’s research has crucial implications for leadership. The best and worst bosses alike suffer from overconfidence and insecurity, from weaknesses and blind spots. Such is the human condition. Yet the best bosses are keenly aware of their flaws, work to overcome them and to reverse the resulting damage, and enlist others who can compensate for their weaknesses.
The most effective bosses devote enormous effort to understanding how their moods, quirks, skills, and actions affect their followers’ performance and humanity. They constantly make adjustments to be a bit more helpful and constructive tomorrow than they were yesterday. To be a great boss, you must constantly ask and try to answer many questions. Perhaps the most crucial is, “What does it feel like to work for me?” If your people answered this question honestly, would they say that you know the impact your words and deeds have on them—or that you are living in a fool’s paradise?

https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Governance/Leadership/Why_good_bosses_tune_in_to_their_people_2656?gp=1

 

Admissions Q&A: Carnegie Mellon

Tepper's James Frick says the business school is looking for MBAs who will make big contributions to its intimate community 

James Frick was recently named director of MBA admissions at Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business (Tepper Full-Time MBA Profile) after working there since 1998. Frick says applicants to the school should consider one factor above all else: fit. It's "a little word that means an awful lot to us here," Frick says. He explains that Tepper is looking for applicants who will thrive at the school and contribute to the community.
To learn more about who Frick considers a good fit for Carnegie Mellon and how Pittsburgh is a "well-kept secret," read this edited transcript of Frick's conversation with Bloomberg Businessweek's Zachary Tracer.
What makes someone a good fit for a Carnegie Mellon MBA?
There is no one template, there is no one career path or previous degree. The students do tend to be really bright and motivated. They absolutely have a very strong work ethic. They generally are achievers, they've made very positive impacts in their academic endeavors or in their work environments. There's a certain sense of humility as well. They are eager to share what they know, but they are very eager to learn from those around them and they tend to be doers. They're very willing to step up and assume leadership roles. They certainly welcome and embrace challenges they face.
CMU as an undergraduate institution has a reputation as being a more technical school, for turning out great engineers. Is Tepper a business school for engineers and scientists?
I think it's for all types. If you look at our typical class profile, you almost always see a 50-50 split between students from a technical background and those from a nontechnical background. And absolutely it can be a great fit for someone with an engineering or a science background. It can [also] be a fabulous choice for someone that doesn't have that background, that looks at this as a skill set that's really going to round out their education and their experiences.
What's the interaction like in the MBA program between the engineers and scientists and the humanities students in the classroom?
I think one of the really unique features of the program is the size of the program. That fosters a very close-knit community. I hate to invoke the Cheers theme song, but it's kind of a place where everybody does know your name, so you really become comfortable working with people from very different backgrounds. There are times in a course where someone with a particular skill set is going to be an asset, but I think what you find is that this balances itself out as you go through the program. If I'm someone who doesn't have a strong analytical background, I could lean on some other classmates who do, but there will be great opportunities in some of the other courses that might be very new to [those classmates].
What are you looking for in the application? What are you evaluating individuals on as candidates for the program?
Our process is really holistic. And being a small program, we pride ourselves on getting to know the applicants. Certainly we're looking for academic aptitude—you want someone who is going to be successful in the program itself. Absolutely a level of professional maturity, if you will. The career preparedness, the career goals, what have they done thus far to bring them to this point, [those are] good indicators for success. There is certainly a community side; we're going to look for interpersonal qualities and leadership.
It's not easy to get into Tepper and you admitted just about a quarter of applicants last year. Any advice for candidates who don't get in?
We offer summer feedback appointments with myself and our executive director, Laurie Stewart. Those are phone appointments [during which we] go over all the areas of the application and then maybe provide some specific suggestions that candidates can consider to become even stronger as they think about reapplying.

One important part of the application is the recommendation. Who makes a good recommender?
I think in a perfect world, the best letter of recommendation would come from someone who either is currently or has recently supervised the candidate. That's not always possible and I certainly appreciate that sometimes the candidates may not be comfortable revealing to their employers their intentions to leave and pursue an MBA. Absent that, senior colleagues can be good choices. If it's a small business or a family business, clients can be good choices as well.
You handle the interview a little bit differently than some other schools. Students can schedule interviews and you will invite students to interview after they've applied. How does that work?
If a candidate is coming in the fall, he or she can request an interview without submitting the application. We just ask for a copy of their résumé and their availability and do our best to accommodate those requests. After a period of time though, we just don't have the ability to continue to grant interviews that are by request. So at that point, which is usually [around] November, it becomes invitation only, and it's based on a review of your submitted application.
So should students who really want to go to Tepper make sure to come to the campus early on and get one of those "by request" interviews?
No, whether you've been invited or you've initiated the interview, it's not going to [be] a point of distinction in terms of how you are evaluated. I would think of it as "how prepared am I right now to interview?"
Do you have any tips for students preparing for the interview? How should someone make sure they're fully prepared?
Well, full disclosure: If I were to gravitate toward one part of the application, I'm the essay guy. I love essays. My background many years ago was in writing and I really see a lot of value in thinking about the essays. I think the best thing someone can do to start preparing for an interview—if they haven't yet written the essays—is to start fleshing out [the essays], just kind of getting a rough outline. The other thing I'll say, too, is that candidates can sometimes view the interview as a monologue and we really view it as a dialogue. So I think it's a great opportunity to think about questions that are important to you and to ask those questions. Hopefully, those questions wouldn't be ones that you would be able to glean from a website or a brochure.
Are any changes to Tepper's curriculum planned in the near future?
We are working through a very extensive curriculum review. I know at this point they are working with a lot of different focus groups and I understand that they are even traveling around the country to meet with alums and recruiters. I know students are going to have a very active involvement in the process. It's an extensive process, so it is going to take some time. I don't know that you would see big changes this year, but looking ahead, it's quite probable that might be on the horizon.
What sort of changes might students see?
I wish I had a good answer for you, but I haven't, to this point, been intimately involved in the process.
How has Carnegie Mellon acted during the downturn to help MBAs find jobs?
It's really helped us, to be a small program. Our staff has come to know students by name, [and] works with them on a one-to-one basis. It's a nice point of distinction when you have a company that's engaging the career center and might be saying: "Well, I'm looking for a student with this interest or this particular background." They're not cycling through databases; they absolutely know the students. Last year, when it was a very challenging economy, a lot of schools were making cuts, and our administration invested in the career center and actually invested in new positions to continue to develop those opportunities with students.
Has the school been able to leverage its relationships with alumni in order to help students find jobs?
Absolutely. I think it's one of the assets of being an intimate community. And you might say, well the negative is maybe you don't have hundreds of thousands of alums, but when you are a student here, you are very much an engaged, active member of the community, and that carries over to your involvement as an alum. I think when you look at companies and recruiters who are on campus, the last number I heard is around 80 percent of these recruiters have some kind of alumni affiliation with the Tepper School or the larger university.
Can you tell me a little bit about how Carnegie Mellon and the city of Pittsburgh interact?
I'm glad you brought up Pittsburgh, because I think it's a really well-kept secret. [Students are] really pleasantly surprised to see how much they enjoy living in Pittsburgh, but also to see what kinds of opportunities there are. Just to give you an example: Yesterday we met with an entrepreneurship professor. She described some of the [business] incubators that are going on within the university, but also their connections to similar incubators, as well as startups in the Pittsburgh area. I think, too, you'll see students who do internships in Pittsburgh or decide that it's a great place to stay and raise a family.

http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/sep2010/bs2010091_148449_page_2.htm

 

A Professor’s Review of Online Cheat Sheets

At this time of year, students are buying textbooks and looking for ways to avoid reading them.

Nothing is new about that. CliffsNotes guides, with their familiar yellow and black covers, have been in book bags since 1958.
What has changed is how many study guides, or cheat sheets, are available online and on mobile phones. Whether you know them as CliffsNotes, SparkNotes or Shmoop, these seemingly ubiquitous guides are now, in many cases, free.
“Two to three years ago, the wisdom was that students do research online, but not study online,” said Emily Sawtell, a founder of McGraw-Hill’s online collaborative study site called GradeGuru. “That has changed in the last 12 months.” Ms. Sawtell said she had tracked a significant increase in the search term “study guide” on Google.
Professors warn that these guides are no substitutes for reading great works of literature, but concede, grudgingly, that as an adjunct, they can stimulate thought and deepen insight.
“The problem is when you use a study guide in place of the original book,” said Cary Nelson, professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and president of the American Association of University Professors. “Then they have knowledge that is not just superficial, but wrong.”
Carl Fisher, chairman of the comparative world literature and classics department at California State University, Long Beach, agreed to review the many offerings, starting with the oldest. CliffsNotes guides cover not only literature, but also foreign languages, math, science, history and other topics, and many of the guides are free online.
In booklet form, 159 literature study guides are available, costing about $6 to $10 each. But more than 250 are available online, and all can be viewed free. Downloading them as PDF files costs $5 to $10 each. A comparatively paltry 39 CliffsNotes for literature are available for mobile at $1.99 each for the iPhone.
CliffsNotes, owned by Wiley Publishing, also offers free podcasts called CramCasts, which are three- to five-minute overviews of books with a plot summary.
“CliffsNotes is one of the most thorough, one of the most insightful,” Professor Fisher said. “If a student wanted to use it along with the text, it would be worthwhile.” He liked that, for some books, the complete text was included with the study guide on line. But CliffsNotes lost points for some dated writing. He looked at notes describing “Candide” in terms of Voltaire’s life and said: “No one does biographical criticism anymore. They haven’t since the 1970s.”
SparkNotes, which is owned by Barnes & Noble and began in 1999, is a newcomer compared with CliffsNotes, but it is well established with today’s students. It offers a library of 690 guides, including literature, math, history and biology, all free on the Web.
Most of the guides are available as e-books for Barnes & Noble’s electronic reader, the Nook, or any device that runs Nook software, which is available for BlackBerrys and iPhones, and handsets with Google’s Android operating system. The electronic editions of the guides and downloadable PDFs are $4.95. The No Fear Shakespeare series, which offers a modern translation next to the original texts, costs $4.99 for each guide. While those are not available as downloadable PDFs, they are available on iTunes for $4.99 each.
About 150 of the SparkNotes are still available in book form for $4.95 each, and the book form of No Fear Shakespeare costs $5.35.
Professor Fisher said SparkNotes’ analysis was more contemporary than that offered on some of the other sites. “It is a generally useful, more nuanced interpretation than the others. Of all the ones I looked at, I’d probably say SparkNotes is the best choice,” he said.
Shmoop, though, is the newcomer. It has been online for only 18 months. It has set itself apart from the stalwarts by synopsizing the expected canon, like Camus’s “The Stranger” and Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” as well as by analyzing more contemporary and popular culture works. Among its 600 study guides are guides for best sellers like Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl Who Played With Fire” and song lyrics like Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi,” which it likens to “The Great Gatsby,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.” Though Shmoop says the authors come “from Ph.D. and masters’ programs at Stanford, Harvard, U.C. Berkeley and other top universities” the site still misspelled the last name of Virginia Woolf, the English author. Guides on topics like civics and economics also are available.
All of the guides are free online. They are also available for 99 cents to $2.99 for the Sony Reader, Kindle and Nook e-readers and iPhone, Android and BlackBerry smartphones using the Nook reader app. Shmoop also sells PDF versions for $5. Study guides for Advanced Placement and college entrance exams are $10 to $25.
Dr. Fisher liked the idea behind Shmoop’s “Why Should I care?” section. It explains the satire in “Candide” by comparing it to modern satires like “The Simpsons” and “The Family Guy.” The problem, he said, is that the writing strains to relate to students. “It makes an interesting attempt to be hip,” he said, “but it is just so high school-y.”
GradeSaver boasts that a majority of its authors are Ivy League-educated. The site offers more than 400 guides covering literature, poetry and short stories, with two film guides. Professor Fisher said that the writing was among the best. “It is quite readable, if you can get around the blue jeans ads, which are right in the middle of the text.”
The site specializes in essays. It sells copies of 712 college essays that the site said landed the authors in top colleges. It says it also carries 2,715 literature essays. The essays are available through a subscription ranging from $3 for a three days (subscribers are automatically enrolled in the $7-a-month program unless they cancel), up to a one-time charge of $50 a year. GradeSaver has an editing service as well, with charges ranging from $8 a page for proofreading to $150 to edit an essay of a maximum of 1,000 words within 24 hours.
The site offers a forum site where students post opinions (on ”Call of the Wild:” “boring ... zzzzzz!”) and cries for help, (“I NEED HELP**ASAP**ON THE UTOPIAS IN CANDIDE”).
Some sites did not make the grade at all. The guides from PinkMonkey — __ which also incorporates notes from TheBestNotes.com and Barron’s Booknotes — were “the least thoughtful, the least insightful and the most disjointed,” Dr. Fisher said.
BookRags, offered only partial summaries free, and Professor Fisher said what he found there was too elementary. “BookRags is for really desperate people,” he said. “It’s simplistic and it forces people to pay up front.” He found the quality of the writing on Bookwolf offensive. “They overuse the passive voice, then they have a lot of rhetorical questions. It’s banal.”
He advised students to use study guides as additional material to the books. “Nothing can substitute for the original text,” he said.
Professor Fisher also had advice for teachers. “I make my students submit their papers through turnitin.com,” which is a plagiarism search engine. He says it is very effective at forcing students to offer some original writing, if not some original thought.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/16/technology/personaltech/16basics.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

A Course Load for the Game of Life

AS a Harvard professor who teaches introductory economics, I have the delightful assignment of greeting about 700 first-year students every fall. And this year, I am sending the first of my own children off to college. Which raises these questions: What should they be learning? And what kind of foundation is needed to understand and be prepared for the modern economy?
Here is my advice for students of all ages:
LEARN SOME ECONOMICS You knew this was coming. Perhaps I am just trying to protect my profession’s market share, but I hope it is more than that.
The great economist Alfred Marshall called economics “the study of mankind in the ordinary business of life.” When students leave school, “the ordinary business of life” will be their most pressing concern. If the current moribund economy turns into a lost decade, as some economists fear it might, it will be crucial to be prepared for it.
There may be no better place than a course in introductory economics. It helps students understand the whirlwind of forces swirling around them. It develops rigorous analytic skills that are useful in a wide range of jobs. And it makes students better citizens, ready to evaluate the claims of competing politicians.
For those who have left college behind, it is not too late to learn. Pick up an economics textbook (mine would be a fine choice), and you might find yourself learning more than you imagined.
Not convinced? Even if you are a skeptic of my field, as many are, there is another, more cynical reason to study it. As the economist Joan Robinson once noted, one purpose of studying economics is to avoid being fooled by economists.
LEARN SOME STATISTICS High school mathematics curriculums spend too much time on traditional topics like Euclidean geometry and trigonometry. For a typical person, these are useful intellectual exercises but have little applicability to daily life. Students would be better served by learning more about probability and statistics.
One thing the modern computer age has given everyone is data. Lots and lots of data. There is a large leap, however, between having data and learning from it. Students need to know the potential of number-crunching, as well as its limitations. All college students are well advised to take one or more courses in statistics, at least until high schools update what they teach.
LEARN SOME FINANCE With the rise of 401(k) plans and the looming problems with Social Security, Americans are increasingly in charge of their own financial future. But are they up to the task?
Few high school students graduate with the tools needed to make smart choices. Indeed, many enter college without knowing, for instance, what stocks and bonds are, what risks and returns these assets offer, and how best to manage those risks.
The evidence of financial naïveté shows up every time some company goes belly up. Whether it is Enron or Lehman Brothers, many company employees are often caught with a large fraction of their wealth in a single stock. They fail to heed the most basic lesson of finance — that diversification provides a free lunch. It reduces risk without lowering expected return.
College is an investment with a great return. The gap between the wages of college graduates and those with only high school diplomas is now large by historical standards. If those college grads are going to manage their earnings intelligently, they need to study the fundamentals of financial decision making.
LEARN SOME PSYCHOLOGY Economists like me often pretend that people are rational. That is, with mathematical precision, people are assumed to do the best they can to achieve their goals.
For many purposes, this approach is useful. But it is only one way to view human behavior. A bit of psychology is a useful antidote to an excess of classical economics. It reveals flaws in human rationality, including your own.
This is one lesson I failed to heed when I was in college. I never took a single psychology course as an undergrad. But after the birth of behavioral economics, which infuses psychology into economics, I remedied that mistake. Several years ago, as a Harvard faculty member, I audited an introductory psychology course taught by Steven Pinker. I don’t know if it made me a better economist. But it has surely made me a more humble one, and, I suspect, a better human being as well.
IGNORE ADVICE AS YOU SEE FIT Adults of all stripes have advice for the college-bound. Those leaving home and starting their freshman year should listen to it, consider it, reflect on it but ultimately follow their own instincts and passions.
The one certain thing about the future is that it is far from certain. I don’t know what emerging industries will be attracting college graduates four years from now, and neither does anyone else. The next generation will shape its own economy, as the young Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg shaped ours. Those now packing up their clothes, buying textbooks and meeting roommates hold the future in their hands. Every year, when I look out over my 700 eager freshmen on that first day of class, the view gives me optimism about the path ahead.
N. Gregory Mankiw is a professor of economics at Harvard.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/05/business/economy/05view.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Apple's Pricing Decoys

Next time you're sitting at an airport bar and hear two businesspeople debate whether Apple (AAPL) is a technology or design company, chime in: "Nope. What Steve Jobs sells is pricing."

Pricing? You bet. Jobs is a master of using pricing decoys, reference prices, bundling, and obscurity to make you think his shiny aluminum toys are a good deal. Apple's Sept. 1 announcement of new products was a classic example. The popular iPod Touch media player has been revamped at three price points, $229, $299, and $399 -- all costing more than the iPhone, which does everything the Touch can plus make phone calls. What gives? Watch Apple, and you can learn pricing tricks for your own business.
First, understand that pricing games are vital for Apple, because competition is fierce in the tech world and product hits just don't last. The current iPad costs $499 in its lowest-powered configuration, vs. the Archos 7 Home Tablet [$189) or the Dell Streak [$299 with a two-year AT&T contract]. And competitors are rushing to offer more functionality for hundreds of dollars less -- the Streak tablet throws in a videocam and phone, which iPads don't yet match. Apple's touchscreen buzz window is closing fast, and even though it will inevitably add features -- I predict the iPad will sport a camera, videocam, and phone within two years -- today's tech wonders, like the much-copied iPhone, become tomorrow's commodity.
So let's count the ways Apple defends itself with pricing:
1. Price decoys. The Economic Daily News of Taiwan reported in August that Apple has started to build smaller, 7-inch versions of its iPad tablet, timed to hit U.S. shelves before Christmas. If you wonder why in the world Apple would add yet another potentially cannibalizing product to its lineup of iPods, iPod Touches, iPads, laptops, and computers, realize that this gadget is likely a decoy. Decoys, in marketing, are products, services, or price points that a business doesn't really want you to take, but rather use as a reference to make another product look better. Economist Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational, gives the classic example of a Realtor who shows you a home that needs a new roof, right before taking you to a higher-priced house she really wants to sell. It's hard to tell if a $400,000 colonial is a good deal -- but compared with a $380,000 home that needs work, it looks damn good. Now consider, $499 for an iPad? Well, compared with a smaller one with fewer features, it suddenly looks great.
Decoys explain why Apple often sells each gadget in a pricing series, such as the new iPod Touch's $229, $299, and $399 price points for different storage capacities. You may gladly spend $229 to get a hot media player, thinking it's a deal vs. the highest-priced version and not blink that you could instead buy an iPhone 4 at the lower price of $199 with more features. The $399 "decoy" has clouded your judgment. Apple wins the best of both worlds -- stoking demand for products that look like bargains and for all the decoys it sells at much higher prices. Yes, some people will spend $399 for a music player with slightly better technology -- and Apple makes even fatter margins.
2. Establish a high reference price. Behaviorial economist Richard Thaler has noted that consumers are really bad at making decisions about value, so constantly need "reference prices" for comparison. A dress costs $80. Is that too much? Not if it's marked down 50 percent from $160. Trick is, that artificial $160 reference price may not really exist. Apple has played this game with itself by launching products such as the iPhone at artificially high reference prices -- the iPhone cost $599 when it first hit the streets -- and then rapidly lowering that price. Today, a $199 iPhone seems a steal; Apple in essence is using its first-iteration pricing as a reference to make its current products feel affordable. You may be on the fence for a $499 iPad, but if it drops to $399 by Christmas, won't you feel better?
3. Obscure the reference price. Ah, this is a more clever Apple marketing trick -- instead of giving consumers a reference price, hide the pricing altogether. Mail order business Omaha Steaks does this by selling complex bundles of meat and side dishes for about $100; the assortment of items obscures any comparison with prices at your grocery store. Candy in movie theaters is another classic example of price obscurity, because it comes in unusual, large boxes that are shaped nothing like what you see at other stores -- so $5 candy seems cool. Apple also obscures references by making its products look like nothing else, from the first iPod with a unique scroll wheel to the current iterations wrapped in gleaming aluminum. Apple seems wondrously unique, until you consider aluminum is the same material you wrap leftover fish in and then it hits you: Apple is disguising itself so you can't compare prices. Is the new $99 Apple TV box a good deal? Who knows? It looks like nothing else on the planet.
4. Bundle price components to hide what you can. Buy an Apple product, and you'll spend more downstream. For every iPad or iPhone sold, Apple likely counts on your future song purchases, video rentals, and soon iAd clicks on app advertising. That sexy new Apple TV thing doesn't store anything, so you'll pay to play. Apple is not unusual here; almost every mobile handset, for instance, has some of its costs buried in future monthly data fees over a two-year phone contract. All of this "bundling" means the price over time is much more than what you think picking up the Apple gadget.
The pricing strategy is brilliant. By staging a series of perceived technology innovations and then adding price decoys, reference prices, obscurity, and bundling, Apple makes us willing to pay more to do the same stuff we did 30 years ago: Read magazines, type messages, watch shows, make phone calls. The communication breakthroughs are mostly an illusion, but with shiny aluminum in our hands, who cares what it costs?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38973101/ns/business-bloomberg_businessweek/

The smartest Books

(FORTUNE Magazine) – In a perfect world, we'd each have our own consigliere. You know, a Robert Duvall, an oracle of Delphi--someone to follow us around 24/7 and whisper wise words. Paper, not plastic. Google, not Infoseek. No, your boss will not enjoy your Mr. Burns impression.
But wait. You do have a wise counselor at your disposal--one that will sit patiently until called upon and even fit in your bag. It's called a book. During the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, John F. Kennedy took counsel from Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August and its account of Europe's stumble into World War I. "I am not going to follow a course," the President told his brother, "which will allow anyone to write a comparable book about this time, The Missiles of October."

You can't always have the perfect book at the ready. But you can have the perfect reading list on hand. Which is why FORTUNE called upon its staffers to select 75 books that will stir your brain--and maybe even stir you to action.

This isn't some dusty business-book Hall of Fame. For one, some of these "business books" aren't really about business. Barnes & Noble might shelve Michael Lewis's Moneyball in the sports section, but it has more to say about investing (and hiring) than any consultant's text. Also, it's not boring. My Years at General Motors is boring--even if it is a classic.

Some classics we love. Reminiscences of a Stock Operator was penned in 1923, but it still holds its own next to Barbarians at the Gate. Neither of those is a how-to book--and in general, we've avoided titles that self-consciously dispense wisdom in favor of those that embed it in a great read. And there's nothing better than the source. Because why read about Warren Buffett when you can read Warren Buffett himself?

It would, of course, take about 75 years to read everything here. But here's our own piece of advice: Don't resist starting a book just because you don't have time to finish it. Open the cover. Read the intro. Skip to Chapter 9. Or simply save this list and put it in a drawer. Because there's gold in them thar books. And they're just waiting for you to mine it.

Booms and Busts

THE GREAT CRASH 1929 by John Kenneth Galbraith (1955). This concise, insightful history has never been out of print since it was first published. Why? "Every time it has been about to pass from print," Galbraith himself wrote in 1997, "another speculative bubble ... has stirred interest in the history of this, the great modern case of boom and collapse."

EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS AND THE MADNESS OF CROWDS by Charles Mackay (1841). This chronicle of Holland's tulip mania of 1634 and the South Sea Bubble of 1720, among other irrational crazes, is an engaging, perceptive account of humanity's urge to plunge itself into speculative frenzies.

FUNNY MONEY by Mark Singer (1985). For sheer entertainment value, Singer's tale of the fall of the Penn Square Bank in Oklahoma--one of the first of the inside-a-scandal books--has never been topped.

THE GO-GO YEARS: THE DRAMA AND CRASHING FINALE OF WALL STREET'S BULLISH '60S by John Brooks (1973). Brooks, the late New Yorker writer, dissects the 1960s mutual fund boom with a panache that business writing hasn't seen before or since.

The Corporation

BARBARIANS AT THE GATE: THE FALL OF RJR NABISCO by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar (1990). This story of an iconic deal, the $25 billion leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco (co-written by a FORTUNE senior writer), has all the stuff of great business journalism--skullduggery, cigars, trophy wives, and enough greed to sink Wall Street. Wretched excess has never read so well.

BUILT TO LAST: SUCCESSFUL HABITS OF VISIONARY COMPANIES by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras (1994). Begin with the simplest of questions: What makes great companies great? Then research the heck out of it. It's a big, hairy, audacious goal--but then, this book coined the phrase.

CHAINSAW: THE NOTORIOUS CAREER OF AL DUNLAP IN THE ERA OF PROFIT-AT-ANY-PRICE by John Byrne (1999). When Dunlap took his enthusiasm for mass firings from Scott Paper to Sunbeam, he left broken pieces and a stock price in free fall. Byrne takes the reader through the debacle in detail, an account that is spiced with the vinegar of a writer who truly loathes his subject.

WHO SAYS ELEPHANTS CAN'T DANCE? by Louis V. Gerstner (2002). Gerstner's account of how he turned around IBM after taking over as CEO in 1993 contains valuable lessons for those who think "corporate culture" is consultant gobbledygook.

Decision-Making

ANNAPURNA: A WOMAN'S PLACE by Arlene Blum (1980). Triumph mixes with disaster in this nail- biting account of the first all-woman attempt on an 8,000-meter peak--an expedition the author led.

THE BEST AND THE BRIGHTEST by David Halberstam (1972). Halberstam's masterful explanation of how the application of raw candlepower--in this case Robert McNamara's whiz kids trying to apply what they learned at Ford Motor Co. to the Vietnam war--isn't always enough.

IN THE HEART OF THE SEA: THE TRAGEDY OF THE WHALESHIP ESSEX by Nathaniel Philbrick (2000). Back when the "oil industry" involved harpoons, a Nantucket whaling ship sinks in the Pacific--rammed by a whale that would inspire Melville's Moby Dick. The harrowing odyssey that follows is a study in bad decision-making.

THE KILLER ANGELS by Michael Shaara (1974). A Pulitzer-winning historical novel that places you at the Battle of Gettysburg in the shoes of the soldiers themselves--including Robert E. Lee as he contemplates one last, desperate charge.

THIRTEEN DAYS: A MEMOIR OF THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS by Robert F. Kennedy (1969). R.F.K.'s spellbinding first-person account reads like a Tom Clancy novel and delivers powerful lessons about delegation and plain old good judgment.

Economics

CAPITALISM, SOCIALISM, AND DEMOCRACY by Joseph A. Schumpeter (1942). Ignore the title and skip straight to Chapter 7, "The Process of Creative Destruction." Look around, and you'll see it happening everywhere.

EVERYTHING FOR SALE: THE VIRTUES AND LIMITS OF MARKETS by Robert Kuttner (1996). Free markets unleash entrepreneurial drive. They also produce the Asian financial crisis. Kuttner gets you thinking about why the invisible hand works and why it sometimes doesn't.

THE GENERAL THEORY OF EMPLOYMENT, INTEREST, AND MONEY, CHAPTER 12 by John Maynard Keynes (1936). For all his fame as a wordsmith, too much of Keynes's work is dense and dated. The amazing Chapter 12 is something else: a timeless, witty, crystalline account of why financial markets confound and bewitch us.

POP INTERNATIONALISM by Paul Krugman (1996). Most of what's said about international trade is bunk, the economist argues in a series of contentious and entertaining essays. Targeting the lazy thinking of politicians, journalists, and even fellow economists, Krugman instructs even as he attacks.

THE WEALTH OF NATIONS by Adam Smith (1776). Smith is often caricatured as a laissez-faire zealot. He wasn't. The Wealth of Nations is an eloquent argument in favor of liberty, enlightened government, and the intrinsic worth of the individual. No one has ever made a better case for the morality of capitalism.

Ethics

DEN OF THIEVES by James Stewart (1991). In this morality tale, good (a crew of dogged government lawyers and detectives) triumphs over evil (Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Martin Siegel, and Dennis Levine). But evil gives it a rollicking run for its money.

THE INFORMANT by Kurt Eichenwald (2000). With its deadpan prose, startling plot, and you-are-there dialogue, Eichenwald's book about a twisted informant at Archer Daniels Midland ranks with anything by le Carré for sheer suspense.

LEADING QUIETLY: AN UNORTHODOX GUIDE TO DOING THE RIGHT THING by Joseph L. Badaracco (2002). Finally, an ethics book for people who live in the real world. Recommended for people who want to keep their job and "do the right thing."

THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind (2003). This riveting account of the Enron debacle (by two FORTUNE senior writers) is unsparing in laying the blame at the feet of all the guilty parties. It explains not just how Enron lost its way, but how all of Wall Street did as well.

THE WAY WE LIVE NOW by Anthony Trollope (1875). Trollope's classic satire about Victorian London, where speculators and trust-fund fops "had but a confused idea of any difference between commerce and fraud," feels eerily familiar to observers of modern corporate miscreants.

Globalization

BEIJING JEEP: THE SHORT, UNHAPPY ROMANCE OF AMERICAN BUSINESS IN CHINA by Jim Mann (1989). The story of how AMC's 1979 joint venture to produce Jeeps in Beijing ended in tears is perhaps the closest thing to a classic work on doing business in post-Mao China. It's required reading for anyone venturing to the world's most populous nation.

DEVELOPMENT AS FREEDOM by Amartya Sen (1999). Dictators around the world argue that a strong hand is needed for economic development; freedom can come later. Sen, a 1998 Nobel Prize winner, says they are dead wrong. Freedom is a foundation stone for development--democracies, he points out, don't have famines.

THE MYSTERY OF CAPITAL: WHY CAPITALISM TRIUMPHS IN THE WEST AND FAILS EVERYWHERE ELSE by Hernando de Soto (2000). For liberal types who are vaguely uncomfortable with property rights (unless the property is in, say, Aspen), Peruvian economist de Soto explains why they matter.

NONZERO: THE LOGIC OF HUMAN DESTINY by Robert Wright (2000). A dazzling mix of history, theology, economics, game theory, and evolutionary biology that paints the world's increasing entwinement as a positive and possibly inevitable development.

THE PRIZE: THE EPIC QUEST FOR OIL, MONEY, AND POWER by Daniel Yergin (1991). Oil is the most important commodity on earth, the fuel of modern civilization. Yergin's great achievement is to give readers a thorough grounding in why the world--and especially the Middle East--works the way it does, while all along appearing to simply spin an engrossing yarn.

WORKERS: AN ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE INDUSTRIAL AGE by Sebastio Salgado (1993). A Bangladeshi shipbreaker's raised sledge. A Sicilian fisherman's anxious gaze. A technician glistening in Kuwaiti oil. This stunning set of images--the work of an economist-turned-photographer--brings us deep into the world economy's engine room.

Investing

THE ESSAYS OF WARREN BUFFETT: LESSONS FOR CORPORATE AMERICA compiled by Lawrence Cunningham (1997). Buffett never wrote a book. Instead he poured his thinking about investments, managing, and corporate excesses into his annual letters to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. Cunningham sifted through the 1979--96 bunch to create this best-of-Buffett anthology.

FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS: THE HIDDEN ROLE OF CHANCE IN THE MARKETS AND IN LIFE by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2001). Taleb, a hedge fund manager, is equally disdainful of Wall Streeters and academics who claim to understand markets: They see patterns that don't really exist. Almost everything, he argues, comes down to Lady Fortuna.

THE INTELLIGENT INVESTOR: A BOOK OF PRACTICAL COUNSEL by Benjamin Graham (1949). Warren Buffett has called this classic guide to value investing--recently updated by Money magazine senior writer Jason Zweig--"by far the best book about investing ever written." What more do you need to know?

MONEYBALL: THE ART OF WINNING AN UNFAIR GAME by Michael Lewis (2003). Billy Beane, the Oakland A's general manager profiled here, isn't just a smart baseball guy with new ideas. He's an exemplar of how to succeed by zigging when everyone else is zagging--which of course is also how great investors make money.

Leadership

NEVER GIVE IN: THE BEST OF WINSTON CHURCHILL'S SPEECHES edited by grandson Winston S. Churchill (2003). "Never give in--never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty.... Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."

ON LEADERSHIP by John Gardner (1990). Gardner sees leadership as an ever-evolving learned skill separate from status or power, and he carefully dissects its many elements--without resorting to cute language or strained metaphors.

PARTING THE WATERS: AMERICA IN THE KING YEARS 1954--63 by Taylor Branch (1988). This spellbinding tale of how Martin Luther King Jr. and others built the civil rights movement shows creative, disruptive leadership in action. King and his comrades possessed none of the conventional tools of power but found ways to wield it nonetheless.

PERSONAL HISTORY by Katharine Graham (1997). The late Graham grew up shy and insecure and stayed that way till her glamorous husband shot himself. Then she found the strength to take over Washington Post Co., which hit new financial and journalistic highs during her tenure. Her defense of the First Amendment made her a hero; her dinner parties made her a legend.

TITAN: THE LIFE OF JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER SR. by Ron Chernow (1998). If 75 books were burning and you could save just one, this might be it: a biography as powerful and detail-minded as its subject.

Negotiating and Managing

A CIVIL ACTION by Jonathan Harr (1995). Harr's story --an attorney fights polluters over carcinogenic toxic waste they left in a town's groundwater--reads like a thriller. It shows how one dogged individual can take on the formidable resources of two corporate giants.

THE EFFECTIVE EXECUTIVE by Peter Drucker (1966). Before you can manage anyone else, you've got to learn to manage yourself. In this slim volume, Drucker tells you how.

REMEMBER EVERY NAME EVERY TIME by Benjamin Levy (2002). Here's a book that delivers on its promise. Read it, and you'll never stare blankly at an employee or a client again.

TAKEN FOR A RIDE: HOW DAIMLER-BENZ DROVE OFF WITH CHRYSLER by Bill Vlasic and Bradley A. Stertz (2000). A tale of how the merger unfolded--and how Daimler's Jürgen Schrempp always managed to stay two moves ahead of Chrysler's Bob Eaton.

WOMEN DON'T ASK: NEGOTIATION AND THE GENDER DIVIDE by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever (2003). The first book to adequately explain the dramatic differences in how men and women negotiate and why women so often fail to ask for what they want at work (starting with equal pay). Every male manager in America should read it.

Office Politics

LIVE FROM NEW YORK: AN UNCENSORED HISTORY OF SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE by Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller (2003). Given the behind-the-scenes sex, drugs, and screaming matches, the most amazing thing about Saturday Night Live is that it ever managed to get on the air, let alone stay there for 30 seasons. Consider this oral history a handbook for managing the highly creative and the borderline deranged.

THE PRICE OF LOYALTY: GEORGE W. BUSH, THE WHITE HOUSE, AND THE EDUCATION OF PAUL O'NEILL by Ron Suskind (2004). No, George W. Bush ("a blind man in a roomful of deaf people") does not come off well. But whatever your politics, you'll be fascinated by the dishy descriptions of how Bush, Karl Rove, and Dick Cheney operate around the office.

THE PRINCE by Niccolò Machiavelli (1513). Machiavelli wasn't as Machiavellian as he is made out to be. Today we'd probably call him "pragmatic." But his treatise--penned after losing his political job in Florence--was shockingly frank. Power and idealism, he said, don't really mix.

SOMETHING HAPPENED by Joseph Heller (1974). This novel--Heller's follow-up to Catch-22--portrays one man struggling with the American dream and a Kafkaesque office where perseverance is the key to promotion.

Power

FATHER SON & CO: MY LIFE AT IBM AND BEYOND by Thomas Watson Jr. and Peter Petre (1990). A son's-eye view (co-written by a FORTUNE senior editor at large) of how Watson Senior started and ran IBM and how Junior took it over. Told in an intensely personal voice, by turns shrewd, grudging, exasperated, and kind, it is the operatic story of power passing between generations.

THE 48 LAWS OF POWER by Robert Keister (1998). The overarching thesis--deceive others lest they deceive you--is appallingly cynical. The wealth of observations ("The longer I keep quiet, the sooner others move their lips") is eminently useful.

INDECENT EXPOSURE: A TRUE STORY OF HOLLYWOOD AND WALL STREET by David McClintick (1982). McClintick turns the federal case against Columbia Pictures and David Begelman into a drama of power--East Coast moneymen like Herb Allen vs. West Coast production honchos--and lets you watch, in intimate boardroom detail, as they tear at one another's throats.

INFLUENCE: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSUASION by Robert Cialdini (1993). How do you get people to say yes? To answer that question, psychologist Cialdini mines nuggets as diverse as mother turkeys, pickup situations, Hare Krishnas, and the unlikely power of the word "because"--and identifies six principles that entice people to buy your stuff.

THE POWER BROKER: ROBERT MOSES AND THE FALL OF NEW YORK by Robert Caro (1974). Moses, the legendary city builder, defied mayors, governors, and even a President, constructing a political machine that lasted for decades. Caro's classic biography is one of the most exhaustive--and exhausting--studies of American power ever written.

Project Management

AMERICAN STEEL: HOT METAL MEN AND THE RESURRECTION OF THE RUST BELT by Richard Preston (1991). If Nucor employees can get molten metal flowing in one unbroken strip, they'll revolutionize the steel industry. If something goes wrong, their new plant can blow up. The author of The Hot Zone makes the tale truly riveting.

THE BILLION-DOLLAR MOLECULE: ONE COMPANY'S QUEST FOR THE PERFECT DRUG by Barry Werth (1994). No writer has ever gotten as deeply inside a company as Werth got inside biotech Vertex. He offers deep insight into the difficulties of drug discovery, the trials and tribulations of startups, and the conflict between great science and good business.

CADILLAC DESERT: THE AMERICAN WEST AND ITS DISAPPEARING WATER by Marc Reisner (1990). The West was not won by gunslingers and whores with hearts of gold. It was won by people who gave it water. This is the best book ever on how politics, business, ambition, and most of the seven deadly sins can work to literally shape the landscape of America.

THE MAKING OF THE ATOMIC BOMB by Richard Rhodes (1986). Reaching far beyond Los Alamos and the Manhattan Project, this hefty tome meticulously pieces together one of the most important and terrifying scientific projects in history.

Strategy

THE ART OF WAR by Sun Tzu (circa 500 B.C.). What may be the greatest book on war ever written contains such aphorisms as "All warfare is based on deception" and "When the army engages in protracted campaigns, the resources of the state will not suffice." It's time-tested poetry for the strategic mind.

BLACK HAWK DOWN: A STORY OF MODERN WAR by Mark Bowden (1999). No one--not the Pentagon, not the spooks, and certainly not the soldiers rappelling from helicopters into the middle of Mogadishu--had any idea of the hell they were getting into. Bowden's history of the humiliating U.S. incursion into Somalia is an eloquent treatise on how not to plan an operation.

INFORMATION RULES: A STRATEGIC GUIDE TO THE NETWORK ECONOMY by Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian (1997). If most writing from the dot-com era reads like 17th-century medicine (give the patient mercury?), here's a book that that holds up. No, the laws of economics haven't changed. Shapiro and Varian show how they apply to the world of information.

ONLY THE PARANOID SURVIVE by Andrew S. Grove (1996). Think of this as a Special Forces handbook for corporate managers. Grove, a co-founder of Intel and its current chairman, shows you squarely how to thrive in the most feared of business environments: one where competition, technology, or the very rules of engagement have suddenly changed.

THE TIPPING POINT: HOW LITTLE THINGS CAN MAKE A BIG DIFFERENCE by Malcolm Gladwell (2000). What do bestselling novels, crime waves, and yawning have in common? They're all examples of how ideas and group behaviors can "tip" from fad into epidemic. Gladwell's book is filled with examples of eclectic freethinkers using the phenomenon to their advantage.

Technology and Innovation

THE LAST LONE INVENTOR: A TALE OF GENIUS, DECEIT, AND THE BIRTH OF TELEVISION by Evan I. Schwartz (2002). This is a cautionary tale of the brilliant visionary (Philo T. Farnsworth) up against Big, Determined Business. You can guess who wins.

NEW AND IMPROVED: THE STORY OF MASS MARKETING IN AMERICA by Richard Tedlow (1990). Who invented the shopping cart? What become of Coke-Ola, Co Kola, and Koke? When did consumers first appear on the American continent? An eminent business historian answers questions you wish you'd thought to ask.

THEY MADE AMERICA: TWO CENTURIES OF INNOVATION FROM THE STEAM ENGINE TO THE SEARCH ENGINE by Harold Evans (2004). Evans takes us from the steam engine to the search engine, profiling 53 of the top innovators in U.S. history. The trait they share isn't greed or the lust for fame, but the drive to democratize--the often shocking desire to bring to the many products previously enjoyed only by the few.

SAM WALTON: MADE IN AMERICA by Sam Walton with John Huey (1992). Most great ideas really aren't that complicated, and Wal-Mart is a perfect example. To wit: Put discount stores in towns that the other retailers thought were too small to support them. Walton's words (written with the editorial director of Time Inc., FORTUNE's parent) still resonate with simple wisdom.

THE VICTORIAN INTERNET: THE REMARKABLE STORY OF THE TELEGRAPH AND THE 19TH CENTURY'S ON-LINE PIONEERS by Tom Standage (1998). A new technology will connect everyone! It's making investors rich! It's the Internet boom--except Samuel Morse is there!

Wall Street

AGAINST THE GODS: THE REMARKABLE STORY OF RISK by Peter L. Bernstein (1996). Life has always been chancy, but putting that truism into a mathematical model is a relatively recent achievement. The effects of that insight have been stunning: Probability theory has played a role in everything from bridge building to derivatives and hedge funds.

MORGAN: AMERICAN FINANCIER by Jean Strouse (1999). The man with the bulbous nose was not so much a robber baron himself as the man who gave the robbers their financial tools. J.P. Morgan's biographer sees his flaws but credits him with doing much to create the modern U.S. economy. It was on his watch that Wall Street became a powerhouse.

REMINISCENCES OF A STOCK OPERATOR by Edwin Lefevre (1923). The fictionalized biography of Jesse Livermore, who might be considered the original day trader, gives a hugely entertaining insider's view of the market in its wild, unregulated days of the late 1800s and early 1900s.

WHEN GENIUS FAILED: THE RISE AND FALL OF LONG-TERM CAPITAL MANAGEMENT by Roger Lowenstein (2000). Lowenstein's book offers a rare look inside the secretive world of hedge funds. It is also a story of greed and power gone awry, and that makes it a modern classic.

WHERE ARE THE CUSTOMERS' YACHTS? by Fred Schwed Jr. (1940). In this mordantly funny critique, a former stock trader reveals that most stock market pros are greedy fonts of self-serving nonsense and most customers are greedy fools. (No, not much has changed since 1940.)

Work and Life

NICKEL AND DIMED: ON (NOT) GETTING BY IN AMERICA by Barbara Ehrenreich (2001). This journalist spent months toiling as a waitress, hotel maid, Wal-Mart clerk--and trying to live on what she earned. Her funny and wrenching account shows why it's so hard for the nation's working poor to get ahead.

RECLAIMING THE FIRE: HOW SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE OVERCOME BURNOUT by Steven Berglass (2001). If you haven't hit that wall, you will someday. At that point, you can head for Hawaii--or you can try to understand what burnout is. Written by a shrink who counsels entrepreneurs and executives, this book is a fine place to start.

THE TIME BIND: WHEN WORK BECOMES HOME AND HOME BECOMES WORK by Arlie Russell Hochschild (1997). We're starved for time. We want balance. So a sociologist interviews everyone at a FORTUNE 500 company--executive suite to factory floor--and guess what? We're not using "flextime," paternity leave, or even all the vacation time offered. Are we the problem?

WORKING: PEOPLE TALK ABOUT WHAT THEY DO ALL DAY AND HOW THEY FEEL ABOUT WHAT THEY DO by Studs Terkel (1974). It would take a callous reader to flip through these interviews of dozens of working Americans, from dentists to gravediggers to housewives, and not come away with the impression of how difficult many lives are--and how gracefully so many people cope. Terkel, a questioner of brilliance and empathy, got it down on paper. 

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/03/21/8254826/index.htm