Harvard Business Review IdeaCast Review: Doing Their Business

A few months ago, while I was visiting Boston, I decided to take a self-guided tour of Harvard. I spent part of my morning walking behind a student who showing off the university to his pals. “This is Harvard Yard,” he said as they walked through campus.” Then he stopped and gestured over at the bronze John Harvard statue. “I peed on that statue,” he said grandly.
He made it sound like this was something he and his buddies did just about every weekend, and all indications suggest that this might be true. Even an official online tour of the university slyly notes that visitors like to touch the statue for luck. The rest? Know better.

The point, I guess, is that you don’t always get what you’re expecting at Harvard. I first downloaded the Harvard Business Review IdeaCast with trepidation—I imagined long, boring academic discussions with words like juxtaposition and meta-analysis peppered into the discussion the way most people rely on like and you know. I expected to be overwhelmed and underwhelmed at the same time.

But the 15- to 20-minute podcasts are totally engaging—and a refreshing change from the dry-as-dirt business podcasts I’ve listened to in the past.

The IdeaCast features discussions with authors and researchers on topics that range from brand authenticity (think: Apple) to negotiation (think: your salary). Oh, and it also explains why I can’t stand anyone older or younger than I am.

Each episode is like a bestselling business book before it becomes a bestselling business book. When it’s just a great little idea that doesn’t get stretched too thinly over 300 pages. It’s like Malcolm Gladwell’s fantastic New Yorker story before it got turned into The Tipping Point. True, it was a pretty spectacular book, but it ultimately got wearying to read the endless examples proving his point. The original article, on the other hand, was meaty without being tiresome.

One of my favorite episodes included an interview with Marshall Goldsmith about ideas. “A person comes to you with an idea, and you think it’s a great idea. Rather than saying: "great idea!", our tendency is to say: "that’s a nice idea, but why don’t you add this to it?" The problem is the quality of the idea may go up 5 percent but the person’s commitment to its execution may go down 50 percent.”

This is basically what happens every time I send out a query and it gets accepted—with 15 adaptations to the original idea. And by the end I’m pretty much uninterested in writing the story, except for the fact that I know I’ll eventually get a paycheck out of the whole thing.

I’m pretty confident that anyone who’s ever had a job—whether in a cubicle or corner office—will appreciate this podcast.