Passion & Purpose - by John Coleman & Daniel Gulati & W Oliver Segovia (Hardcover)

About the Book

Twenty-six young MBAs reflect on business, leadership, and life, offering a rare behind-the-scenes look at the way their ideas, aspirations, attitudes, and practices are shaping business as they take on the mantle of leadership.

Book Synopsis

Globalization. Sustainability. Technology. Diversity. Learning. Convergence of the public and private sectors. These are the big issues on the minds of young leaders today--the challenges they most want to, and must, pursue.

In Passion and Purpose, dozens of recent Harvard Business School MBAs share personal stories on assuming the mantle of leadership in ways unlike any previous generation. In candid accounts of their successes and setbacks--from launching start-ups to taking on the family business to helping kids in the Arabian Gulf to harnessing new technology and developing clean energy--they reveal how the next generation of ideas, aspirations, and practices are shaping business and redefining leadership around the world.

Drawing on insights from a survey of 500 students from top U.S. business schools, Passion and Purpose provides an overview of big, hot-button issues, followed by firsthand accounts from young leaders who are tackling these issues head-on. Their personal stories are rounded out with broader perspectives from established luminaries in business, academia, and the public sector, including Dominic Barton (Managing Director of McKinsey & Company), Nitin Nohria (dean of Harvard Business School), David Gergen (CNN analyst, presidential advisor and director of Harvard's Center for Public Leadership), Carter Roberts (CEO of World Wildlife Fund), and many others.

Passion and Purpose offers profound insight into the values and vision of tomorrow's leaders, and inspiration and ideas for all aspiring leaders who hope to lead change in the world.

Review Quotes

"Leaders in each generation face several challenges that are quite different from those that confronted leaders in earlier generations and are also quite different from those that leaders in future generations will encounter. It was ever thus and always will be true. That is one of several reasons why I think so highly of this book." -- Blogging about Business (bobmorris.biz)

Featured on the J.P. Morgan Summer Reading List for 2012

"wholly infectious", and an "upbeat, enjoyable read--as well as a useful one." - The Financial Times

"...the reader is rewarded with a richness of information and a great view of things to come in the business world, based on the stories of these young leaders. Summing Up: Recommended for students, upper-division undergraduate and up; faculty; practitioners." -- CHOICE

"Far from accounts of the stereotypical generation of entitled slackers, the stories in Passion and Purpose demonstrate the innovation, collaboration, efficiency, and independence of rising young leaders." -- Training + Development Magazine

"We're introduced to a group of highly impressive MBAs who want to change the world for the better... The result is a surprisingly compelling array of vivid storytelling that reveals this generation's ideas and aspirations." "In the end, Coleman and his two buddies have pulled together a book that is less about mainstream MBA thinking than it is a clarion call to a less-traveled, yet potentially more impactful MBA path." - John Byrne, Poets & Quants (PoetsandQuants.com)

About the Author

John Coleman earned an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Dean's Award winner, and an MPA from Harvard Kennedy School, where he was a Zuckerman Fellow and a George Fellow. Daniel Gulati holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Fellow and an Arthur Rock Fellow, and is the founding CEO of FashionStake, a venture-backed fashion company. W. Oliver Segovia received an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School, and is an entrepreneur in the Philippines and Singapore, where he previously worked with Procter & Gamble Asia.