Drawing Dr. David Morris as chimney sweep Artist, Joan Ricardi
 

Harvard Business School:
The Great Marketing Illusion

For the sake of brevity the following business school newspapers can replace the word Harvard with their own name: Yale, Duke, University of Texas, Northwestern, Cornell, NYU, Stanford, University of Chicago, USC, University of Pennsylvania. Oh yes, having graduated from Syracuse University, I cannot exclude Penn State. The rest of the business schools are the same as Kmart and Wal-Mart, reproducing their fall line clothing with knock offs. 

Is it possible that your education at Harvard Business School is not as good as one from the University of New Haven? Is it feasible that what they are teaching and encouraging you to believe about business has long been outdated? Many top corporations have overlooked this little secret for years with the full understanding that the less you actually have learned about business the easier your adjustment into corporate life will be.

How could it be imaginable that all of the so called top business schools are without substance? Is it conceivable that your so-called top professors have no interest or awareness of business practice? These institutions are still in an eighteenth-century time warp and continue to focus their professors' research interests to such a narrow point of view that art appreciation would be more valuable than most business classes. 

Why then, is it an advantage to go to Harvard Business School and not the University of New Haven? Harvard's selection criterion responds to whom you are perceived to be at the time of entry. There is no doubt that the experience at Harvard Business School gives a person advantages in the marketplace. Your personal expectations and the anticipations of society are a boost that will help you all through your lifetime. Nevertheless, do not expect to transfer very much of what you have been taught to business practice. Perhaps, only those graduates of HBS who figure this out soon enough actually succeed in business. 

As a Professor of Marketing, I can tell you that marketing is too valuable to let you or your professors know anything about it. Just imagine, if what you were taught in marketing were really to help you, what would the impact be on the balance of power in the nation and the world? There is absolutely nothing that I have found in marketing textbooks, journal articles, newspaper and magazine articles, and case studies that will help you to understand anything about success in marketing. Your business education has been linear and so has your perception of marketing. We bring the ordinary to the University of New Haven and work to help them become extraordinary, while Harvard's job is to turn the extraordinary into the highly paid ordinary. Harvard's mission statement should read Divide and Conquer, or Division of Labor Creates Wealth. 

Should I share the secret of marketing with you, or just the students at the University of New Haven? What will you become with this secret? Will you emerge with compassion toward others? Will the digital corporation allow you to survive or will HAL shut you down? I will help you. Your development as a student is a responsibility that my generation has turned over to linear institutions such as Harvard. We are all reaping the whirlwind. Look beyond this superb marketing illusion, and make a difference with your lives.

 David Morris
  1998

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