The MBA Experience at Harvard Business School

In their first year, all students take the course The Entrepreneurial Manager. Most second-year students take 2 or 3 elective courses and many work on entrepreneurship-oriented field studies.

HBS Entrepreneurs
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Students & Companies

working together

Job opportunities for both career positions and summer internships.

Executive Education

We offer many programs on launching, building, and running new ventures.

The Arthur Rock Center for Entrepreneurship supports Harvard Business School's mission to "educate leaders who make a difference in the world" by infusing this leadership perspective with an entrepreneurial point of view.

Founded in 2003 from a donation by pioneering venture capitalist Arthur Rock (MBA 51), the Center supports faculty research, fellowships for MBA and doctoral students, the annual business plan contest, and symposia and conferences.


History of Entrepreneurship at HBS

Since the founding of HBS in 1908, many of its graduates have become entrepreneurs.  Indeed, by 2008, nearly 50% of its MBA graduates were becoming entrepreneurs by their 15th reunion.  The first formal courses in entrepreneurship began in the late 1930s and 1940s, and those course offerings have multiplied rapidly in the last 10 years.  All first-year MBAs take a required course in entrepreneurship, and can choose from nearly 2 dozen second year electives on that topic.  The School has an entrepreneurship department of 35 faculty, the second largest at the School.

Read more about the history of entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School in “Shaping a Legacy: the History of Entrepreneurship at HBS,” and “A Half-Century of Teaching Entrepreneurship.”