Josh's Weblog: HBR IdeaCast

HBR IdeaCast

Primarily because I read Harvard Business Review and Harvard Management Update I recently checked out HBR IdeaCast, Harvard Business Review's experiment with Podcasting. I'm an infrequent reader of another Harvard-related experiment, HBS Working Knowledge, as well.

HBR is not entirely new to podcasting, however, as they have been publishing key excerpts of both of the above publications through Audible.com but it appears that Audible may have been doing the lion's share of the work for them.

The first six episodes have been oddly named, with a hodgepodge of Artist, Album, and Genre settings, making them hard to find in my list of publications on iTunes. Also, as an iTunes Podcast, several of the items were truncated by iTunes's pathetic downloading system. I resorted to going directly to the HBR IdeaCast page and downloading the items directly with FlashGot. When Audible delivers my content through iTunes, I don't have this problem although I've seen it with other podcasts.

The content has also been a tad disappointing for someone that gets HBR and HMU. It's sometimes a rehash, and sometimes a repeat, of information I already have! Such is life, I suppose, since this is free and those other items are paid by subscription. The web page above, however, is a poor promotional tool. I hope that once they clean it up it will be as professional as the other products that come out of Harvard Business Review.

HBS Working Knowledge, in contrast, has improved their look and emails me important new articles as they arrive. I'm hoping that the material that was going into the Harvard Negotiation Newsletter (no longer available through my subscription) migrates there.

Josh Poulson

Posted Saturday, Jul 8 2006 10:04 AM