Harvard Business School

For the first decade or so of its existence, HBS focused mainly on its own survival, and on figuring out what it would teach, and how it would teach it. Secondarily, it focused on developing a research agenda, and on finding ways to disseminate the fruits of that research.

But the amazing success of the case method, as championed by Dean Wallace Donham starting in 1920, dramatically expanded the School's agenda, and led it into a leadership position in management education.

This change can be dated with surprising precision. In 1921, the Association of Collegiate Schools of Business (ACSB) was decidedly cool toward Dean Wallace Donham's focus on the process of teaching business, rather than course content. This was understandable: Donham's experimental "case method" was then only a year old, and was essentially unproven.

But it didn't take long for Donham's experiment to prove itself. By 1923—only three years after the publication of Melvin Copeland's Marketing Problems—106 American colleges and universities were using one or more HBS casebooks.

In 1925—a year in which 217 schools were purchasing and using casebooks, and a number of additional schools appeared to be using pirated HBS cases—the ACSB invited Donham to address its annual meeting on the subject of the case method. Instead, Donham sent a top aide (and future dean), Donald K. David, to proselytize to the ACSB. "It was the impression of those attending the meeting," according to subsequent HBS faculty minutes, "that other schools of business were looking to this institution to assume a leadership role in developing methods of teaching business."

Donham himself played a role in "exporting" the HBS model. In 1925, he took a three-week leave from Harvard to help Stanford University set up the nation's second exclusively graduate school of business. Subsequently, he gave HBS Professor J. Hugh Jackson a year's leave to help out at Stanford—and Jackson ultimately wound up resigning from the HBS faculty and serving as Stanford's second dean.

One reason why HBS attempted to be helpful to Stanford and other business schools was the conviction—shared by President Lowell and Donham among others—that professional schools at Harvard and elsewhere should be able to accept all qualified applicants. (This was part of their mission.) When HBS "outgrew" the Baker campus, in the sense of not being able to admit all qualified applicants, this put new pressures on the the School. Briefly, the idea of creating a second HBS of approximately the same size as the existing one was considered; after that, the emphasis was on leveraging the School's methods through other institutions.

The first sign of success in this direction came in Paris, in 1930, when the Centre de Preparation aux Affaires was established, as the result of conversations between HBS professor Georges F. Doriot and the Paris Chambre de Commerce. Donham traveled to Paris to formally open the new school, and—stopping in London on the way home—gave advice to the London School of Economics, which was then organizing its new "Department of Business." The following fall, a young HBS professor—Malcolm McNair—spent a term at the new London school to continue HBS's contributions to the new department.

The Great Depression and World War II interrupted much of this expansion, although isolated efforts at "exporting" the HBS model continued. In 1942, for example, Professor J. Anton de Haas traveled to Bogota, Colombia, to help plan a college of business administration for that country.

The early postwar years saw an explosion of overseas activities led by U.S. universities, including Harvard. In some cases, HBS led the way—in part because it saw the need to broaden the perspectives of its own faculty, students, and graduates. "We are convinced," Dean David wrote to Harvard's President Conant, that it is of the utmost importance that businessmen in this country be concerned about and be literate about the problems and attitudes of other nations."

David proved to be an active participant in shaping the thinking of both HBS and the Ford Foundation, in the critical years of the 1950s. In 1951, for example, HBS supported the "American Universities Field Staff," based in New York, which sent young scholars out on assignments around the world, where they conducted research and built strong relationships with local academics and businessmen. And in 1954, on behalf of the Ford Foundation, David embarked on a tour of educational institutions and management programs in Norway, France, Switzerland, and Germany. His recommendation to the foundation: support a system whereby American schools could consult to foreign schools, and also groom "native" faculty who could return home and shape management education in their own countries.

Sometimes overseas schools—or their corporate sponsors—took the lead themselves. In 1952, for example, the chief executive officers of Fiat and Olivetti approached HBS professor Charlie Williams to request his help in forming a new business school in Torino, Italy—a school that was purposefully set up outside the existing Italian university system, in an effort to sidestep academic and government bureaucracies.

Meanwhile, the HBS executive education programs opened a second "front" in the campaign to export the School's means and ends. The Advanced Management Program, an outgrowth of a World War II-era training course for senior executives, quickly won admirers around the world. In 1948, the University of Western Ontario asked for help from HBS in setting up its own version of AMP. In 1953, a second request from a group of interested Canadians prompted members of the HBS faculty to participate in the "Atlantic Summer School for Business Administration" in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In the following year, a group of Hawaiian businessmen persuaded the School to offer the "AMP in Hawaii," which for the first time brought the School's executive programs within each reach of Australia, New Zealand, and the island nations of Oceana.

These ventures were all "informal," in the sense that they had contractual basis or formal university blessing. The first exception to this rule came in 1954, when the Ford Foundation awarded HBS a ten-year grant to help create the Turkish Institute of Business Management in Istanbul—an ambitious program that became a model for subsequent large-scale programs.

By 1955, the School decided to create an "Office of International Relations," both to manage faculty time most effectively and to make foreigners' visits to the campus more productive. Professor John B. Fox became the office's first head. This new entity arrived just in time, because shortly thereafter, the School's international activities exploded in number and scale. New ventures were created in the Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, and Chile. And in 1957, Professors G. Albert Smith and C. Roland Christensen helped Nestle establish a new school in Lausanne, Switzerland. Originally conceived by Nestle as a school exclusively for its own employees, IMEDE (at the strong urging of HBS faculty) was expanded to include substantial numbers of "outside" executives, as well. The Lausanne school also provided a critical training ground and research "laboratory" for HBS professors seeking a broader international perspective.

IESE (Barcelona, 1958) and INSEAD (Fontainebleau, 1959) also drew heavily on HBS talent. In 1964, with assistance from HBS, IESE offered the first two-year MBA program in Europe. With the help of Georges Doriot, INSEAD became the first full-time graduate school of business in Europe to be completely independent of state, university, or corporate direction.

The founding of the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad in 1962—also funded by the Ford Foundation, and actively pushed by international veteran Professor Harry Hansen—brought HBS and its methods to yet another corner of the world.

Two years later, HBS returned to the United Kingdom to help an informal group establish a six-week AMP-type course that would "travel" from city to city in the U.K. In 1984, this itinerant course found a permanent home at the Oxford Center for Management Studies (today known as "Templeton College"). And in 1963, British industry called for the creation of new business schools in London and Manchester explicitly patterned after HBS (although not with direct aid from HBS).

As the ten-year Turkish Ford Foundation contract drew to a close in 1963, the U.S. State Department's Agency for International Development asked HBS Dean Baker to draw on the School's resources to set up a new business school in Central America—a request later seconded by President John F. Kennedy. Although this particular proposal prompted some debate at Soldiers Field, it was ultimately approved by the faculty. This school, spearheaded by George Lodge and eventually known as INCAE, first offered a five-week AMP-type program to 50 participants in Guatemala in July 1964. Construction on INCAE's Antigua, Guatemala campus began in 1967, with Dean George Baker attending the groundbreaking ceremonies. HBS subsequently helped INCAE develop a full-fledged MBA program—the first in the region—and assisted in the development of a second campus in Managua, Nicaragua, which subsequently had a turbulent history. Although the contractual relationship between the two schools ended in 1972, informal ties remain strong today.

The pace of overseas "expansionism" gradually slowed. Professor Dick Dooley helped a group of Mexican business people launch IPADE in 1967. (In 1992, Dooley received an award from IPADE for his 25 years of service to the institution.) In 1972, Professor Norm Berg helped launch NEMI near Oslo, Norway—the brainchild of a small group of Norwegian MBA graduates. In that same year, HBS lent informal assistance to efforts to found the Iran Center for Management Studies. The School had a notion—never fully fleshed out—to create parallel programs in Iran, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, and although Professor Richard Rosenbloom helped get the Jerusalem Institute of Management off the ground, the Saudi program was never launched. The Indonesian Institute for Management Development opened in 1984 with assistance from Professors Harry Hansen, Robert Anthony, and Louis Wells.

One reason why the pace of HBS's "missionary work" overseas slowed in the 1970s was because the School had made a commitment to establishing a formal European beachhead in Vevey, Switzerland, where the International Senior Managers Program (ISMP) was launched in 1972: the first HBS executive education course based outside the U.S.

Yet another strand of HBS going overseas—in addition to setting up programs and institutions overseas—was the recurring effort to train teachers. This activity began in 1956, with the creation of a teacher-training program for European teachers. In 1958, with the active encouragement of Dean Stanley Teele, the School authorized the creation of the International Teachers Program, cosponsored by the Ford Foundation and the Agency for International Development. ITP remained at HBS until 1971, when it relocated to Leysin, Switzerland. HBS severed its formal ties to the program in 1979.

A second-generation effort in this spirit was launched in 1990s, when HBS and four other leading business schools sponsored the Central and Eastern European Teachers Program, aimed at bringing 120 Eastern-bloc teachers to U.S. executive education programs within two years. Under the auspices of this program, 62 Central and Eastern European teachers attended an intensive seven-week general management program at HBS.

Individual faculty members' efforts also played an important role in helping schools overseas. In 1971, for example, Andrew Towl received a Ford Foundation grant to conduct workshops in the case method overseas. Ray Vernon accepted the post of director of Harvard's Center for International Affairs. Joe Bower helped plan and found the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis, which opened its doors in 1972. Ray Goldberg developed into a one-man global network through his Agribusiness programs. In the late 1980s, Paul Lawrence served as one of four directors of a cooperative U.S./U.S.S.R. project to develop guidelines for joint enterprises between the two rivals; this helped open the door for subsequent Russian students in the MBA program, and subsequent research programs.

Recent deans have substantially expanded and transformed the way HBS conducts global outreach. In Dean John McArthur's tenure, for example, the School (and in particular, Professor Colyer Crum) helped a Japanese company, Nomura Securities, establish a school in Japan. And under Dean Kim Clark's leadership, HBS in 1996 launched a new "Global Initiative," aimed at building on the School's legacy of global engagement by supporting HBS faculty, students, and alumni in their work, and encouraging a global perspective in research, study, and practice. In the subsequent decade, a half-dozen research centers were established around the world. Although this model was substantially different from the School's previous international outreach efforts—now, the School intended to be a "student" as much as a "teacher"—building strong ties with local educational institutions remained a priority.

In many cases, it is HBS alumni who help jumpstart international initiatives. This was true in China, where several determined Chinese nationals who were graduates of the MBA and doctoral programs began pushing the School in the late 1970s to engage with the world's most populous nation. Over the next quarter-century, pursuing multiple initiatives, HBS developed close and productive ties with leading Chinese businesses and universities.

One final initiative aimed at helping other schools deserves mention here. In 2001, Professor Michael E. Porter introduced a graduate-level course entitled "Microeconomics of Competitiveness" (MOC). MOC was unique not only for its content, but also in its delivery. With the help of several young colleagues, Porter set up a global network of schools that would also teach MOC, following Porter's curriculum and using his cases, teaching notes, videotaped lectures and classroom discussions, and other materials. In effect, Porter recreated HBS's celebrated case method at schools around the world, depending heavily on a web-based interface with those schools. Between 2001 and 2007, institutions in 53 countries taught MOC to approximately 4,000 students.