Michael Mazzeo

THREE TOP MBA PROFESSORS - ONE BIG ROAD TRIP Full of powerful insights about product differentiation, pricing, brand management and tactics for battling the 'Big Boys', The Roadside MBA takes the blue-chip knowledge and tactics of Wall Street, and brings them to the High Street. Paul Oyer, Michael Mazzeo and Scott Schaefer have taught thousands of MBAs at some of the world's leading business schools. While travelling back from an economics conference together they dropped into a shoe store in Maine and chatted to the staff - and quickly realized that the strategic problems faced by small businesses are just as rich and compelling as anything challenging Microsoft or General Electric. These three wise men decided to go in search of real-world case studies that illustrate the key lessons of an MBA. The result is a rollicking American road trip that is both a great introduction for business owners who haven't done an MBA, and an entertaining refresher for those who have.

In this "refreshingly different" high-toned business book, three leading business school professors take to America's back roads in search of offbeat small businesses--enterprises that hold valuable lessons for executives and entrepreneurs everywhere (Bloomberg Businessweek). While playing hooky from a conference in Boston a few years back, three former colleagues from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management hopped in a car and embarked on a life-changing road trip. They pulled into a shoe store in Maine and noticed that the sales help was unusually pushy. After a few questions, they discovered the store had a "secret shopper" program, in which employees would be marked down if they were not sufficiently aggressive with customers. A lightbulb went off. Instead of teaching the tried-and-true case studies involving GE and Microsoft, these three men decided to pull their heads out of their ivory towers and search for insights about product differentiation, pricing, brand management, building a team, and a host of other topics. Why take your cues on employee compensation from Wall Street when you can learn from a Main Street company like Couer D'Alene's best crime-scene cleaner? Want to learn about scaling a business? Come meet Dr. Burris, the flying orthodontist, who operates multiple, profitable practices in rural Arkansas. Spiced with vehicular mishaps and unexpected finds, this is one business book you won't want to miss.