Educational Objectives

The mission of Harvard Business School is to educate leaders who make a difference in the world. The question addressed in this course strikes at the heart of our mission: how is it that some individuals manage to have such an outsized impact on the world? To answer this question, students will study—and learn from—the life choices made by a variety of people who have left a lasting legacy.

Course Content

Each week, students will analyze HBS case-length biographies to understand the choices that high-impact individuals faced in their lives and the paths they chose to follow. The leaders we study come from business, science, the arts, government, humanitarian organizations, education, sports, and entertainment. Their personal lives and values are wide-ranging—and, at times, controversial. However, they all have one thing in common: they are famous because they changed the world in significant ways (see Table below for list of individuals from which we will draw subjects for class discussion).

The purpose of in-class analyses will be to uncover commonalities among these high-impact individuals: What skills did they choose to invest in early in their careers? How did they allocate their time? What did they choose not to do? How did they balance the pressures of career and family? What critical goals did they set for themselves? How did they leverage their energy and creativity? How did they discover new opportunities and new ways of seeing the world?

This course is positioned in the final semester of the MBA program for a reason: the search for patterns in choices among these prominent historical figures will challenge graduating students to think through the choices that they may want to make (or not make) in their own lives and careers.

Grading will be 40% participation, 10% for a mid-course one-page hand-in, and 50% for a short final paper. The paper will ask students to apply course concepts in two ways. First, students will be asked to choose a prominent individual not covered in class (from a subset of the people listed below) and analyze a case study about that individual, using course principles to explain the reasons for his or her success. Second, students will be asked to reflect on how they will apply what they have learned in the course to the life-choices they will inevitably face in the future.

Leaders to be Studied

Listen to Cold Call, an HBR podcast where Professor Simons discusses one of the cases covered in the course:

Link to “Marie Curie: A Case Study in Breaking Barriers” (https://hbr.org/podcast/2022/11/marie-curie-a-case-study-in-breaking-barriers)

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