Digital MBA: America’s Best Business Schools on Your iPod

Is it something of an oddity to see the words of famous philosophers and historians getting digitized

and downloaded to iPods everywhere? Sure it is, and that’s why we generally like talking about humanities podcasts. But is it strange to think of America’s leading business schools carving out a space on iTunes and bringing their ideas to an international audience? Hardly. For schools whose success depends on being closely tied to the pulse of American and global audiences, getting involved with podcasting is a no brainer.

Let’s take a brief tour of what America’s top b-schools are up to these days, starting with The Wharton School of The University of Pennsylvania. Launched about a year ago, this podcast collection (iTunes – Feed – Web Site) is an offshoot of the school’s online business journal called “Knowledge@Wharton.” And what you get here are “audio articles” that feature high-profile executives and faculty, including several that highlight stock market guru Jeremy Siegel. Some of these podcasts focus on timeless b-school issues (strategy, innovation, mergers, alliances, etc.). Others explore more timely questions: New Models for TV and Internet, What Makes an Online Community Tick?, and Which New Tech Companies Are Innovating Most?. Most are worth your time.

From Philadelphia, we move to Harvard in Cambridge. This podcast collection, known as HBR IdeaCast (iTunes  Feed), is also closely aligned with the school’s business journal, the famed Harvard Business Review. And, here again, you get well-produced audio segments that offer insights on key issues in today’s business world, whether it’s how to do business in China, how to be an effective and resilient leader, or how to adapt to very new trends in e-commerce.

Moving south to the Research Triangle, we visit Duke’s Fuqua School of Business (iTunes – Web Site), which has the beginnings of what promises to be a strong audio collection. While you’ll want to give the most time to the fairly robust Distinguished Speaker Series, you may want to peruse the MBA Leadership and Marketing Experience series as well. Also in the same general vicinity is another collection worth a good look. It’s from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia (iTunes – Feed – Web Site)

By now, you probably have a good sense of what you can generally expect to find in these collections. So let’s briefly leave you with two last ones. First, the compilation assembled by The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business (iTunes  Feed  Web Site). Among others, you’ll encounter talks by Nobel Prize winner Gary Becker and also Steven Levitt, the co-author of the recent bestseller Freakonomics. Lastly, we end at Stanford and its series called “Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders,” which gives you access to what Silicon Valley has in no short supply – entrepreneurs, including ones from Google, Genentech, and Juniper Networks. Click. Download. Sync. And you’ll be in business.

For more podcasts, see our university podcast collection and also our  complete podcast collection here.