Harvard Business School Altering Its MBA Program

Harvard Business School has taken its MBA program to the streets. The days of sitting in classrooms and discussing case studies written by professors might just be over. The age of live case studies is here.

The economist.com gave an illustration that young mums shopping in the Copley Mall in downtown Boston last month found themselves being questioned about their use of soap by students from Harvard Business School. The students were not doing odd jobs to earn beer money, it said but that they were preparing to help a firm in Brazil launch an antibacterial cleanser.

Our schools have to take a cue from this. The era of learning by sitting in the classroom should be altered and incorporate live case studies as we push for entrepreneurship in our higher institutions. Learning by doing is the way forward in meeting today’s challenging business environment and cut-throat competition. This move has been described by the economist.com as a radical overhaul of the MBA curriculum succeeds.

Also, the new paradigm driving this change is known as “FIELD” (Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development). Nitin Nohria, the dean of HBS in July 2010, says that “if it works, the FIELD method could become an equal partner to the case method.”

While management suffers from the challenge of transforming itself into a profession similar to law or medicine, I think this could be a masterstroke in turning the tides. I think we could be seeing an era of practical application of management studies with the potential to solidify management as a profession.

Insightfully, Harvard Business school starts with team-building exercises with students engaged in group projects in a collaborative manner; next students will be sent to work for a week with one of more than 140 firms in 11 countries and then the last which is novel part of the course will see student given eight weeks, and seed money of $3,000 each, to launch a small company.

In all, such immersion experiences are potently transformational especially when backed up with classroom time. This program is expected to be expensive and like everything human not everyone wants to be a guinea pig. Fine it is, I hope our government and private sector bodies draw upon this.

One Comment

1. 

   Beems

   December 8, 2011 at 11:25 am

   Excellent article.  I recommend such hands-on portions in our curriculum.  Tertiary institutions, take note please.