I met a Harvard Business School student this weekend who said he wants to be the next Rupert Murdoch. But can there be another Murdoch in this age of disintermediation?
This student didn't know too much about blogs and the emergence of participatory media. You may be shocked, but actually most businesspeople out there don't know much about this stuff. Blogs and blogging (even from the marketing perspective) do not seem to be part of the HBS curriculum. I was going to email him some links. But I might as well make it an open blog post for anybody who is interested.
So if you're interested in trying to become a media moghul of the future, you better read this, this, and this (PDF). Just for starters.
I don't know whether there can be another Murdoch. But I do say there can be another William Randolph Hearst. This is the first time in generations that a journalist and a student can think like entrepreneurs.
Posted by: Jeff Jarvis | January 17, 2005 at 02:57 PM
I just finished an MBA with the UK's Open University. My last course was on marketing and, to my great shock, it barely mentioned the Internet in terms of websites or email, let alone blogs. So I guess I'm not surprised that blogs are not on HBS' radar. For the schools, until some big-name business professor publishes a paper on a phenomenon, it doesn't exist. If the b-schools don't find some way to speed up this study-and-report process, they will becomine increasingly irrelevant to actual business practice, and will not be producing any modern-day Murdochs.
Posted by: Deirdre' Straughan | January 18, 2005 at 02:23 AM
I think Heart, Pulitzer, Murdoch and Turner are very rare people indeed.
My great respect for Pulitzer and Turner, and loathing of Murdoch and Hearst, don't speak to the fact that they were/are all very intelligent and quite lucky.
Posted by: Josh Narins | January 22, 2005 at 11:41 AM