Transformational Education > New technologies
Warren McFarlan on the Learned Report
Transcript
And I think the pivotal turning point came in 1967, when we were spending a lot of money, in an ad hoc way. Two faculty members had been brought on, where that was their primary interest. And the Dean was concerned about how much money and efforts should be spent on this.
And Ed Learned was tasked to put together a report on the future of information technology at the Harvard Business School. And I will admit that was a very threatening report to me when he interviewed me, because that was all I was interested in, and I was really being interviewed to see whether my future was at Harvard. Since my father had to defend the future of X-ray physics in the Physics Department in a previous generation, and lost it vis a vis nuclear physics, this was particularly threatening.
That Ed Learned, fortunately, came to three critical decisions. The first one was that information technology was going to be critical in supporting and enhancing the educational processes of the school. Secondly, he was able to visualize that the school's administrative processes were probably going to be turned absolutely inside out. And thirdly, the notion that, in fact, the curriculum of the School, and what we would be teaching about would, in fact, be turned dramatically. Now that was sort of the pivotal document.