Founded in 1908, Harvard Business School is nearly as old as the concept of management education itself—and for the past century, the School has produced leaders and ideas that have shaped the practice of management in vital organizations of every kind around the globe.
At HBS, we see our history as a challenge—a legacy of energy and innovation we strive to equal every day. From our faculty to our alumni, the greater HBS community is continuing to redefine the nature of management education and to invent the future of business.
100 Years of History: 1908 – 2008
Explore the School's history through an interactive timeline created for our Centennial celebration in 2008.
| Key Start Dates: | |
|---|---|
| 1908 | Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration established (the world's first MBA program) with a faculty of 15, 33 regular students, and 47 special students. |
| 1922 | The Doctoral Program was established. |
| 1922 | The Harvard Business Review was founded. |
| 1924 | The case method was established as the primary method of instruction. |
| 1924 | Business school campus constructed. |
| 1945 | First executive education program (Advanced Management Program) held — a group of sixty executives and recently demobilized veterans. |
| 1959 | Women graduates of the Harvard-Radcliffe Program in Business Administration were admitted to the second year of the MBA program. |
| 1993 | Harvard Business Publishing was formed as a wholly owned subsidiary of Harvard University. |
| 1997- 2006 | Global Research Centers opened in Silicon Valley; other regional research centers were opened in Asia-Pacific (1999), Latin America (2000), Japan (2002), Europe (2003), and India (2006). |
| Deans: | |
|---|---|
| 1908-19 | Edwin Francis Gay |
| 1919-42 | Wallace Brett Donham |
| 1942-55 | Donald K. David MBA 1919 |
| 1955-62 | Stanley F. Teele MBA 1930 |
| 1962-70 | George P. Baker |
| 1970-80 | Lawrence E. Fouraker |
| 1980-95 | John H. McArthur MBA 1959, DBA 1963 |
| 1995-05 | Kim B. Clark PhD 1978 |
| 2005-10 | Jay O. Light PhD 1970 |
| 2010 - | Nitin Nohria |
