Harvard Business School

Myles Mace — a 1938 graduate of HBS, and an instructor in the Stat School — concluded his wartime service early in 1946 and returned to HBS. At that point, he told Dean David that he wanted to start a course on the problems of starting and running small businesses.

David came from a small-business background, and was worried that the School had neglected this vast segment of the American economy. And as a practical matter, the flood of returning servicemen was threatening to overwhelm the School’s modest second-year curriculum. At that time, HBS offered 30 electives. Based on current enrollments, the School would have to offer at least 40 the following year.

Working under great time pressures, Mace pulled together a course — Management of New Enterprises — designed to “center attention on the opportunities, risks, and management problems involved in establishing and operating new enterprises.” Students in the course would grapple with “management issues faced by individual entrepreneurs” — the first time the word “entrepreneur” appeared in an HBS course description.

When the course was formally launched in February 1947, it had 188 students. Clearly, Mace had tapped into a significant tributary of student opinion. A survey published in an August 1947 edition of the student newspaper, “Harbus”, revealed that 59 percent of fourth- term HBS students hoped to make their careers in companies of small or medium size.