Blog Post

Update on Dean's Priorities

In January 2011, I reached out to share with you a summary of the many conversations I had during my first few months as dean and to outline an emerging set of priorities for Harvard Business School that arose from them. We've come to call these priorities "the five i's:" :

innovation
intellectual ambition
internationalization
inclusion
integration

Now, in January 2012, I am writing to update you on our progress in each of these areas, and on the work of the School more generally.

Dean Nohria Addresses the Class of 2011

I will always enjoy a special bond with the Class of 2011, as you are the first to graduate during my tenure as Dean. As I stand here today, giving this Commencement address, I have to pinch myself to believe it is actually happening. When I came to the United States in 1984 to attend graduate school — at that other noted institution in Boston on the wrong side of the river, called MIT — I have to tell you, this moment was beyond anything I could have imagined. Like some of you may have felt when you joined HBS, I was desperately hoping that I would somehow survive and not make a fool of myself among my peers.

But what makes great American universities great is that they open up opportunities you can scarcely imagine. I began a doctoral program thinking I would become an international banker and instead found a very different path — a path that has brought me to teaching and here, to Harvard Business School.

Dean's Priorities

With the new year underway, I thought it would be useful to share with you an emerging vision and set of priorities for Harvard Business School. These have been formulated following a series of discussions with the faculty, members of the School's advisory boards, other alumni, staff, new and returning students in our MBA and Doctoral Programs, Executive Education participants, Harvard University President Drew Faust, fellow deans (from within and outside Harvard), and Allston-Brighton neighbors.

I asked them their thoughts on the School:
What are the most important opportunities we face?
What makes us distinctive?
Where should we be doing more, or differently?
How are changes in the world likely to affect us?

These conversations helped me refine an early agenda for the future as this extraordinary institution as it enters its second century.

Blog Post

Notes on Global Trip

On 26 July, I left Boston to begin a 10 day/5 city trip around the world, with stops in London, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and San Francisco. I wanted to meet with some of the School's alumni as well as other business leaders and educators to hear their perspective on the opportunities and challenges facing Harvard Business School; it seemed an outside-in view would be a valuable complement to the impressions I am gathering as I talk to faculty and staff (and soon, students) here on campus. I also was keen to get a first hand view of some of the locations where we have invested in developing research centers, especially our new facility in Shanghai.

Blog Post

A Message from the Dean

I feel a profound sense of responsibility for continuing Harvard Business School's proud legacy of groundbreaking ideas and transformational educational experiences and to be building on the strong foundation created by our predecessors over the last hundred years. I recognize that we stand at a unique moment in time, and I am energized by the challenges that lie ahead. With business education at an inflection point, we must strive to equip future leaders with the competence and character to address emerging global business and social challenges.