The Faculty Information Tool is a prime example of the School's IT strategy of "disintermediation"—giving people easy-to-use tools, then getting out of their way. The web-based application captures and integrates data from the School's robust Oracle-based enterprise database about each HBS faculty member's background, research, and publications, all in easy-to-analyze formats. The results are published on our Faculty and Research website. Users can see the data in any number of ways, from automatically generated citations and curriculum vitae. This exhaustive record can be searched by faculty member, by recent books, book chapters, published papers or working papers and by keyword.
Faculty and their assistants enter information quickly and easily into a standard web page for instant access by colleagues and researchers worldwide. A faculty member or her assistant logs into a secure online application. From there, the faculty member can edit her biography and enter a URL for a copy of her C.V., and edit her online research summaries.
Another page allows a faculty member to edit her Areas of Interest which enable colleagues from around the globe to find HBS faculty members interested in focused topics, industries or geographical areas.
A faculty member will want to include her dissertation, along with reports, HBS Working Papers, non-HBS Working Papers, and others. The papers are directly linked to our database, so that if the paper was an HBS Working Paper, the title can be searched and chosen, rather than re-typed.
Course materials might include a case, exercise, simulation/game, a note, supplement, teaching note, or something unusual. All of these cases are also searched in the Harvard Business School Publishing records, to minimize manual data entry.
Articles include articles, book reviews, guest columns and editorials, etc. Periodicals are all listed in the application and approved.
A faculty member can also enter any books or book chapters, presentations and other teaching and training tools, all using the HBS database whenever possible.
We provide the simple tools and interface and let the faculty who know the information the best enter it. The result is a well-integrated, formatted and informative publications page for each faculty member at Harvard Business School. These very thorough pages ease collaboration among the faculty here and with faculty at other schools.
