From Morningstar's "44 Lessons about Stock Investing": "10. If a company's CEO has a Ph.D., avoid the stock. Often, the CEO is too brilliant for his own good, and misses the forest for the trees. (There are exceptions to this rule, of course.)" I don't get this. Is there any truth to this or is this just one persons bias agains Ph.D.'s? Take a brilliant CEO that doesn't have a Ph.D. Does that mean his capability is dimished if he decides to get a Ph.D.?
I have written about the phenomenon in the world of politics, in which politicians with a Ph.D. rarely use, or even mention that fact: Newt Gingrich, Phil Gramm, George McCovern, Woodrow Wilson, etc. Herb Caen speculated this was because of the belief that people won't vote for someone they think is smarter than they are. Could there be a comparable situation in business? Seems improbable but not impossible to me.
Could make for an interesting study. All of the information (if you used publicly traded companies)is readily available for someone with the interest to track it all down. A dissertation in waiting, perhaps? Certainly an interesting topic for a peer-reviewed article. Tom Nixon
There may be some truth to it. Earning a Ph.D. and writing a dissertation is an act of extreme focus. It's using one's mind as if it were a microscope. But strategic business management might call for a different style of thinking, in which one uses one's mind like a wide-angle lens, taking in the big picture in its full context. But I can see the value of a Ph.D. when precise understanding of technical details is crucial. The top management of a biotech firm had better have a good grasp of some pretty arcane biology before they decide how to apportion their research budget. Does demonstrating an unusual ability to focus indicate a superior intellect that would make superior wide-angle vision more likely as well? Or are these two cognitive styles mutually exclusive? We assume that earning a Ph.D. teaches a student how to think like a scholar. But is that really how we want our managers thinking?
Both my VP and President have PhD's (hard sciences). In meetings with scientists they have a card with they title and Ph.D. , and when in meetings with executive managmeent, a card that omitts the PhD. Kind of goes with this.
I guess it's just another example of how I don't fit into the mainstream. When I vote for someone I pray that they are smarter than me. I've had some notable disappointments over the past several years. Jack
