Harvard Business School - Day 14

Sunday, 20 Sep 2009
Under a general agreement with my Working Group today was a "no work" day, or at least a day when the group had agreed not to meet (I think all of us did at least a little study on our own).
The highlight of today was a bus trip organised by HBS around Cambridge and Boston.
There is certainly lots of European history to be found here some of it dating back to the original settlers just after the turn of the seventeenth century, when a bunch of disenfranchised English dissidents (who had issues with some aspects of the Church of England) arrived after a brief and potentially life saving sojourn in Holland.
From about 1620 through until 1776 when the British were vanquished from the eastern shores of the continental United States (leaving their tea at the bottom of the harbour) there was a very strong English influence and indeed rule from across the Atlantic for the first 150 years.
You can see it in the architecture, and although the monarchy has long gone, at times in Boston, you could be forgiven for thinking you were in London, with the brick buildings and row after row of terraced housing.

The tour guide described it as monarchy in a republican setting (not as in “republican” the GW Bush American political party, as this is the heart of the democrats, think JFK and Roosevelt).

So as part of this tour we went up the second tallest building in New England.

New England for those of you that aren't familiar with the geography of the eastern seaboard of the USA, comprises of the 6 states that are bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the East, Canada to the North and New York State to the West.

The six states being Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont and Massachusetts.
The six states comprise about 186,000 square kilometers (NZ=268,000) and has a population of 14 million (NZ=4), but interestingly enough Boston is the biggest city with around 600,000 (so bigger than Christchurch but well under half the size of Auckland).

Part of the tour was to go up the second tallest building in New England at about 50 stories high. It was a beautiful day and the views and vistas were truly spectacular.

The interesting thing is that if I had been here prior to September 11 I would have been able to go up the HIGHEST building. But because it is deemed a security risk public access has been closed by the government.

It is a bit sad if you own the highest building (which in reality isn't much higher than the one we went up) and derive a nice little additional revenue stream from charging tourists to shuttle up and down your lifts for a 360 degree view of Boston and beyond.

Some random act outside of your control occurs and greater powers than you in an ironical twist of fate close you down thereby gifting your business to the building you usurped when you constructed yours.
Quite clearly if someone is going to commit a terrosrist attack in a city near you, then only the nest and biggest will do as a potential target.
All that aside Boston is hugely multi-cultural and surprisingly European. After they had sent the English packing they could hardly embrace their architecture so there is significant French, German and Italian influence in many of the buildings.
Sick of being cultured I found a beer and a burger and settled into watch the New England Patriots beat the New York Jets in NFL (Gridiron) expect they didn't. So the very first day I barrack for a team that everyone is picking to win and win comfortably..... they loose.

I am sure that if my sporting allegiances continue to go this bad I can claim diplomatic immunity or political asylum and scurry home.