When I am asked about the highlights of the past fiscal year, I note it was the first time since the pandemic that we filled Klarman Hall for the MBA RC welcome. Aldrich and Hawes Halls teemed with students and faculty bustling to and from class, we hosted conferences and research symposia, executives flowed through the Chao Center and Tata Hall, the Harvard bells pealed joyously for commencement, and alumni gathered in the thousands for reunions. We delighted in these moments of togetherness for our community.
It was also a year when we made significant progress on several important priorities. At a moment when AI took center stage with the advent of ChatGPT, our own digital transformation—exploring how we can leverage data and information technology to fundamentally transform the School’s impact and reach—gathered momentum with the hiring of Katia Walsh, the School’s first Chief Digital Officer. Additionally, the work of the Digital Data Design Institute (D^3) surged forward, forging relationships among faculty members to accelerate research on large, multidisciplinary problems. In less than a year, D^3 has scaled to support 12 labs involving 34 faculty members on topics ranging from digital reskilling to pricing to customer intelligence to trustworthy AI.
As part of our endeavor to elevate the role of business in society, Harvard Business School participated in the first Harvard Climate Action Week, welcoming alumni and other private and public sector leaders for a day of discussions on the role of business in driving solutions to the climate challenge. The Institute for the Study of Business in Global Society introduced The Social Purpose of the Firm, a new, short module offered in January of the first year of the MBA Program featuring five cases that explore the role business and business leaders play in addressing societal challenges.
What drives us to make progress on all these fronts is our steadfast commitment to our mission of educating leaders who make a difference in the world. We can only achieve that by attracting the most innovative thinkers and the most collaborative learners to our community—regardless of their financial means. To that end, last year we announced that we would provide full-tuition scholarships to the 10% of students with the greatest financial need, fully recognizing that talent is more evenly distributed than opportunity.
You’ll read about all of this and more in this annual report, along with a deep dive into our financials and some other key metrics on the health and vitality of Harvard Business School.
I look forward to sharing further updates with you in the year ahead.
Srikant Datar
Dean of the Faculty