August 15, 2002
Contact: Catherine Walsh
Harvard Business School
(617) 495-6931
Harvard Business School hosts academics from around the globe
BOSTON -- Nearly fifty senior professors and deans from business schools in Latin America, China, Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Europe are currently immersed in a ten-day colloquium at Harvard Business School (HBS) on an interactive form of teaching and learning known as the case method.
These business scholars, many of whom used to rely on lectures and textbooks in their classrooms, are learning a radically different approach: how to lead intensive discussions about real-life business situations or cases. They are also learning how to research and write case studies as effective tools for teaching modern management, and how to incorporate technology into the case method.
Tania Casado, a senior business professor at the University of São Paulo in São Paulo, Brazil, says her world has been turned upside-down since she arrived at HBS last week. She loves to travel. She is in Boston during a glorious stretch of sunny summer weather. And all she can focus on is getting ready for her next class - as a student, rather than a teacher.
"I have been sleeping only four or five hours a night since I arrived," says Casado with a laugh. "It is very exciting to see the strong relationship that can develop in the classroom between professors and students. I am learning a tremendous amount about how to improve my own teaching skills."
Now in its third year, the Colloquium for Participant-Centered Learning (CPCL) grew out of Harvard Business School's long-standing commitment both to teaching by the case method and helping business schools around the globe develop curriculum.
The challenge of "somehow bringing five billion people into the global economy" drives the School's commitment to CPCL, says Professor Howard H. Stevenson, senior associate dean for external relations at Harvard Business School and CPCL faculty co-chair.
Harvard Business School sells six million cases each year, many of which are used at business schools around the globe, points out HBS Professor Thomas R. Piper, CPCL co-chair. "But many people don't understand what is involved in effectively teaching a case," he says. "CPCL is all about teaching teachers that a case doesn't have a right answer so much as a right thought process about the messy issues of business."
Research centers opened by Harvard Business School in Buenos Aires, Hong Kong, and other parts of the world in recent years enable HBS faculty to study cross-border and cross-cultural issues in business management, says Professor John A. Quelch, senior associate dean for international development at HBS. "CPCL illustrates how we at Harvard Business School hope to give back to the regions in which we work," he says.
Enase Okondeo, the MBA director at the Lagos Business School in Lagos, Nigeria, has found interacting with both HBS faculty and fellow CPCL attendees "an incredible gift." She adds: "I have picked up a number of little tricks and techniques to make my teaching more effective. And I'm finding it very helpful to compare notes with a fellow participant from South Africa about how our respective schools operate and how we can improve."
Claudio L.S. Haddad, director of the Instituto Brasileiro de Mercado Capitais (Imbec) in São Paulo, Brazil, says his school switched over to the case method after several faculty and administrators went through the first CPCL program two years ago. "I have found that this type of discussion-based learning gets to the heart of business's challenges," he said.
What Walter Alba, MBA program director at Imbec, finds most compelling is the way in which HBS professors "link the intellectual and emotional dimensions" of business through the case method. "The HBS professors are almost like actors, in the way they move all over the classroom and engage students in discussing and understanding a business case," he says. "The intellectual content that comes through this kind of emotionally engaging teaching stays with you a long time."