Book Review "What They Don't Teach You At Stanford Business School"

Larry Chiang never got his MBA but was featured at Harvard and Stanford Business School. Harbus, featured him in a cover story that shares the same title as his book, “What They Don’t Teach You At Stanford Business School“. Since great authors and entrepreneurs are ofte their own harshest critics, you get a window into what Chiang thinks about his own book due out tomorrow.

“What They Don’t Teach You At Stanford Business School” having a Movie-ography is really the only highlight worth mentioning

By Larry Chiang

Reading helps you know more than reading less.

I get early access to the best books. Authors send spec copies for me to review. I love reading and actually got my start in blogging writing glorified book reports for the “Found: Read” channel at GigaOm.

Anyway, I got access to a copy of “What They Don’t Teach You At Stanford Business School”– by logging onto the author’s laptop with a big duck9 as the wallpaper. Yeah, its my computer and my book.

Here’s my scathing review of the 386 page hardcover that is all the rage on Amazon, NY Times, the WSJ, Harbus and Amazon.

In short: Don’t buy this book.

The book is lowest common denominator. It does not have a Bibliography or Index. It has what Chiang calls a “Movie-ography”. He recommends movies to watch and cites examples from Top Gun, Monsters Inc and Color of Money. Granted there are mentorship examples but I felt dumber and dirtier after reading (err looking at his pictures- He has over 500 pictures in his book.)

The books focus is on sales, entrepreneurship and character compassing people… but I flet so dirty getting sold on his movie idea inside of his book. He uses a “case-study” of three strippers that start a business. Plot spoiler: they all end up going to Stanford GSB.

Its genius and stupid at the same time. There is an entire chapter on “Dumbing Down” so maybe its on purpose. There are grammatical errors and mispelled words strewn throughout the book that I do not think are all on-purpose.

This book aspires to suck less but it does suck a little. The original is way better, “What They Don’t Teach You At Harvard Business School”. I find it curious that neither McCormack or Chiang ever went to business school. It makes me want to write a sequel. Its a good thing Chiang’s book does not have a copyright*.

This post was cranked out in about an hour so email me if you see a spelling or grammatical error(s)… larry@larrychiang com
Larry Chiang is the founder of Deep Underground Credit Knowledge 9 (Duck9). He hacked Fair Isaac’s FICO credit algorithm and battles lies told by the credit industry such as Fair Isaac’s claim that the average FICO is 720. The real average is 535.

Text or call him during office hours 11:11am or 11:11pm PST +/-11 minutes at 650-283-8008. If you email him, be sure to include your cell number in the subject line.