Don't Believe the Hype

This venerable mag. has been the popular touchstone of corporate strategy probably since it's inception. Anyone who is anyone has published here. So my problem with it? Everything is diluted to the point that it is virtually unintelligible. The reader is left with only remnants of what was probably cutting edge thinking and research. I submit as an example the work of W. Brian Arthur, the economist probably most famous for his modeling of increasing (as opposed to decreasing) returns in information intensive industries. Now when I read the article in the HBR it had been so diluted as to sound like utter nonsense. It was not until I downloaded a reprint of the seminal paper from his website that the fundamentals the theory became clear, and one could follow the argument. And yet this should not be. If anything the editors should be making such work more accessible to the masses, not obscuring it. The HBR, by virtue of its fame and Harvard brand, has the potential to bring brilliant research into the thinking and decision making of America's executive suites. However it at best serves as an expensive coffee table decoration, and at worst it serves to discredit the sincere and scientific work done by economists and strategists around the country.