Canter Bridge

Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

Not every publication gets to use the name ‘Harvard’ in their masthead. It’s a perk that comes with the territory and banks on the accumulated legacy of many generations of excellence.

Satisfaction is when the product lives up to the label, the brilliant father’s son turns out well, the apple falls deliciously close to the tree. The Harvard Business Review does the Harvard moniker proud.

HBR puts cutting-edge, high-quality research into the hands of both scholars and business practitioners in way that starts with solid research and then cuts to the chase. It’s a credit to the recently deceased Theodore Levitt’s editorial genius that HBR comes out accessible rather than obfuscatory. Good editing is a precious thing.

The September 2006 issue before me is not as tightly themed as some, yet its diverse offering is as rich as ever. Articles include

* Ten Ways to Create Shareholder Value
* Rethinking Political Correctness
* With Friends Like These: The Art of Managing Complementors
* How to Keep A Players Productive
* Curveball: Strategies to Fool the Competition

Then there are the regular departments:

* HBR Case Study: Indispensable
* Managing Yourself: the Decision to Trust
* Tool Kit: The New Science of Sales Force Productivity
* Best Practice: When Your Contract Manufacturer Becomes Your Competitor

Each month’s articles are treated to an executive summary at the back of the Review.

HBR gives its readers a mix of sociological, economic, psychological, and statistical takes on business at a level that can reasonably be called authoritative.

People argue whether HBR is as good as it used to be. Maybe. Maybe not. The bottom line is, savvy business thinkers couldn’t get by without it twenty years ago and they’re at the same disadvantage if they don’t take HBR today. It’s hard to argue with indispensability.