IT Management Slideshow: 9 Truths About Business You Won't Learn in School

Which do you think is more important to career success: Academic pedigree or street smarts? Jay Barney and Trish Gorman Cliffor, authors of the book, What I Didn't Learn in Business School: How Strategy Works in the Real World (Harvard Business Review Press/Available now), have provided an exclusive for CIO Insight: nine real-life "truths" from their book that are particularly important for every CIO to keep in mind. The book doesn't dismiss the value of an MBA. But the authors contend that learning continues long after a graduate has stepped from the educational environment into the real world. It's there that professionals must learn to navigate the personalities, skill sets and politics that are at the core of every enterprise. Barney is a professor of management at Ohio State University. Clifford is a former consultant and director of global strategy learning at McKinsey and Company. She now teaches strategy to executives. What I Didn't Learn in Business School is a fictionalized account of a character named Justin Campbell's journey toward discovering these lessons.