Shots In The Dark

Folks at Harvard are buzzing about two stories in the new issue of Business Week. (Subscriber-only on the web, sorry.) The first, a news story titled "Harvard No Longer Most Likely to Succeed," discusses the Summers' fallout on his administration's agenda. The second is an editorial, and it's called "Harvard's Lessons in Management—Summers' Provocative Style May Push His Lofty Goals Out of Reach."

Coming from a conservative, business-friendly organ like BW, these articles are a pretty tough one-two punch; they'll get read by Harvard's money people, and, more than the faculty, they constitute the bottom line.

The editorial is particularly wounding: "Summers joins the ranks of recent leaders brought in to generate change in organizations only to misfire and fail," it says, lumping Summers in with Carly Fiorina of Hewlett Packard and Howell Raines of the New York Times. "Creative organizations, be they universities or corporations, cannot be coerced into change. In the
21st century, they must be coached, cajoled, and coaxed."

Of course, there's one big difference between Summers and Raines and Fiorina: He still has his job. It's an irony that Summers wants to make Harvard more like big business—hiring consultants, limiting employee access to the press, closer partnering with the private sector, almost doubling the president's salary—except when it comes to the job security of the CEO.

Still, that Summers remains president is what makes this story so compelling. Can a 50-year-old man famous for his brilliance—and infamous for his arrogance—really, truly change?