Harvard Business Review Is Bringing It

Recent travels has allowed me to catch up on some magazine reading and my biggest surprise was continuing evolution of Harvard Business Review under Adi Ignatius. Take the articles by Niall Ferguson and Dan Ariely in the July/August edition. These two authors certainly have higher institution credientals to belong on the pages of HBR with Ferguson at Harvard and Ariely at MIT. And their research certainly fits the profile of the magazine. But it's the style and composition that is so refreshing. While the audience is clearly business executives, the pieces read like articles you would find in The Atlantic. The editorial is a wonderful move away from the rote problem/research/conclusion arc that has been the mainstay of HBR prose. There were certainly pieces in the current issue that still match the the vintage style, though even those seemed shorter and with more callouts of additional material. Their Different Voice column interviews the fiction writer and media commentator Cory Doctorow, another refreshing choice. I am looking forward to what the fall will bring. So, yes, the time has arrived to pick up the magazine again. Harvard Business Review is making a run at being relevant again.