From June 2010, Nitin Nohria, alumnus of IIT Bombay, will
take over the responsibilities to lead Harvard Business
School, the world's most respected management education
institute. We are all wondering, where will Nitin and his
team lead Harvard?
We get some idea of Harvard's strategic directions, from
the recent landmark research by Harvard Professors, which
is summarized in the HBS publication, "Rethinking the MBA".
This research coincides with the year of completion of 100
years of Management education by Harvard. For a quick
review listen to David Garvin at
The research and book "Rethinking the MBA" is also
co-authored by Srikant Datar, IIM Ahmedabad alumnus.
The research is based on data collected for the period
2000 to 2008 from 36 top management schools in the
world, detailed interviews with Deans, faculty, recruiters,
employers and other stakeholders. Six detailed case
studies were prepared.
What is required in an MBA course are three major
components - (1) Knowing - Knowledge of the various
management subjects. (2) Doing - Having the knowledge,
how to actually do things in practical situations (3) Being -
Being aware of the actual purpose of what managers do,
the responsibilities and roles of managers towards
shareholders, society at large, employees etc.
Most existing MBA programs already take care of the
"Knowing" component. Students 'know' a lot more than
even what the actual job demands. But present day MBAs
do not meet the requirements of "Doing" and "Being".
In the present context, the research identified following
unmet requirements by existing MBA programs:
(1) Global Perspective (2) Leadership Development
(3) Integration (4) Organizational Realities (Power, Politics etc.)
(5) Creative, Innovative thinking (6) Oral and written Communication
(7) Risk, Regulation & Restraint
Leading management Schools have already initiated
changes to incorporate these unmet requirements in their
MBA programs. There are however many challenges. How
to provide "doing" component? Generally to learn "doing",
the student must be in a real life environment, in small
groups, under close supervision of an experienced
professional. The same requirements have been already
successfully implemented by Medical schools and they
have evolved a model which can be easily copied by
Business Schools. Harvard Medical School has about
600 students but the faculty to teach these students
exceeds 10,000 (mainly because faculty includes
several physicians from the attached medical hospitals.)
How will Business Schools build this large, practicing
manager's teams to become part of faculty?
A part of the solution to meet this requirement is the
successful, well placed community of Alumni of these
business schools. Harvard is planning to mobilize the
alumni to add the "doing" component to their MBA program.
Will IIT and IIM alumni do the same for their almamaters?
