Srikumar Rao teaches the most popular course at the Columbia Business School in New York. Meant to help future business leaders define their personal ethics and goals, it's a forum for self-exploration. Dr Rao offers his students ways to think about situations that will confront them, as well as ways to deal with them, and he does this using a mixture of stories, exercises, discussions and other thought-provoking techniques. For example, the students are asked, over the course of a week, to eat at least one meal a day alone and in silence, to sharpen focusing skills. In another exercise, they are asked to hold conversations with fellow classmates while blindfolded to become acquainted on more than a superficial level. In another assignment, on the subject of networking, they are asked to help five people they admire without any expectation of repayment...The subject of a New York Times profile, Dr Rao frequently finds that his students finish his course with a greater sense of integrity and of the values they wish to live by, and yet still have the skills to lead successful lives. Now, for the first time, Rao's course is available to a far wider audience in this accessible, ground-breaking and unconventional guide to life, and how to live it in a more meaningful way.