Harvard Business School

Warren McFarlan—a recent Harvard College graduate with a semester of computer programming under his belt—had enrolled at HBS in the fall of 1959 expecting to take courses on information systems and computer-based technologies in preparation for a career in business.

But there were no such courses.

"I can still remember picking up the [HBS] registrar's handbook of courses," McFarlan recalled in the early 1980s, "and reading it forward, backward, and forward again—and discovering not a single word which could have anything even remotely to do with computers or information systems.  It was at that moment that I began to see a potential opportunity."