What 500 Harvard Case Studies Actually Do To Your Brain - E729

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What is the purpose of the 500 Harvard case studies and how do they train the brain?

Jeremy Au 0:00
What Harvard is trying to do is that they're trying to squeeze like five hundred case studies into your brain. Your brain is a supercomputer and you grew up in one context, in one geography, one industry, one role. And our job is to put you in the positions kind of like a multiverse where you were the decision maker in Apple, in Atari, in BlackBerry, in Samsung, in Chanel and Louis Vuitton at a Doom startup, as an RD leader, right? As a whistleblower, as somebody who is facing bankruptcy, right? They're putting in this multiverse of decision maker roles and asking you to empathize with that person with the information that they had at that time. and what you would do and decide. And then after you make your decision and debate that as a team, reveal the outcome of that class.
Edric Poon 0:52
Hi everybody, hey Edric here from Brave. Thanks so much for tuning in. Now it's a reverse interview. Jeremy's in the hot seats. And there are so many questions I've been asking with regards to Harvard MBA. What do they teach there in terms of leadership? And how is that applied in our part of the world? What's really interesting here is because Jeremy has been investor, founder, C suite. So so many areas he's probably seen where it works and where it doesn't. So Jeremy, welcome to your own podcast.
Jeremy Au 1:25
Well, I've always been the one asking the questions and having that charming opening high energy voice. And now I'm back in the hot seat. So happy to contribute where I can.
Edric Poon 1:36
Yeah, cool. Thanks so much for that. Because the thing is that when everybody talks about Harvard MBA or it's just an MBA in general, what exactly is it for? I've just heard that people just take it for a networking and that's it. Tell me something else.
Jeremy Au 1:50
I think that um, you know, there are three major aspects that are really important for I think the Harvard MBA. I think the first is actually the utility of it. I think for most uh students who are going in, this is actually an opportunity to learn about exactly business, leadership, different industries. And also, I think a socially acceptable time for them to also pivot their career if you need to or deepen it. So for example, a consultant who is a junior to mid-level consultant say, I really want to double down on consulting. So this is my way to get to the partner path. Or they might say, This is my time for me to explore my interest in aviation, right? In a different geography. And then use the MBA to learn, but also network and get to a different industry, right?
Jeremy Au 2:36
And I think my favorite story is I have a friend, he was an Indian in India working on pricing. strategy or or as an analyst effectively for airlines, right? And then after his half NBA, he was able to move to San Francisco and join McKinsey as a consultant, right? And then after many years he became a founder in San Francisco. So I think to him, without that half MBA, how could he have made that shift with the skills, the time, the pivot? To change geographies. industry and role at the same time, right? I think that's such a difficult thing to do for most people. So I think a lot of utility. Two, actually, yeah, I think that the social network is an important piece of it. Business is a global business.
Jeremy Au 3:21
Obviously, local connections are important, especially if you're building a small or medium enterprise. But if you're building like multinational corporations or building a global company, I think there's actually a surprising amount of overlap. And I think one thing I think about a lot is that this is something that people keep talking about, but it's very hard to explain. Maybe another way of saying it is I think that when we look at who are the titans of industry, they're around fifty or sixty years old, right? They're on the board, they're CEOs, they're whatever it is. And the reality is getting access to their time in the fifty or sixty years old is pretty impossible because everybody wants their time, everybody wants to do a deal with them and everybody has something to sell them.
Jeremy Au 4:00
So the time when you need to be friends with them and let them trust you at a deep level,

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