Lessons From Harvard

What is it that gives education at the Harvard Business School (HBS)

an allure and personality of its own? In true marketing parlance it's the four

Ps: the Product is great-well chosen case studies delivered with style and

panache by some of the world's leading thinkers and educators. The Price is

right-premium but well worth it. The Place is truly wonderful as befits a

great learning environment. And, and the Promotion is just perfect-when one

looks at the number of nationalities represented in a typical MBA or AMP class,

you realize how well the brand and the products have been sold across the world!

At a time when the entire Indian IT industry is clamoring for

better output from its own academic institutions, what is it that we can learn

from the best of the best-an institution which has consistently produced more

Fortune 500 leaders than one would care to count? Currently spending eight weeks

here, at this prestigious institution, there are many insights that are dawning

on what our institutions, and indeed our fledgling industry itself, can learn as

we move higher and higher to global success.

First is the need for a strong, practice-oriented, approach in

the education process. The HBS case method is well known to everybody but when

you see even concepts like Discounted Cash Flows in planning Capital Investment

decisions taught by looking at actual cases like the Airbus 380 project, which

can make or break the company, the value of applying the case approach, to

explain the application of quantitative techniques to one of the most intriguing

problems of our times, come to light in the most startling manner.

Ganesh Natarajan At Harvard, hands shoot up even before the issue is raised by the teacher taking the class-you get the picture of motivation that the system manages to instill

Second is the need to develop a strong spirit of inquiry and

insight in the academic process. A Harvard class is never like our traditional

chalk and talk lectures where a few learn, and the vast majority sleeps. Imagine

a hundred and fifty CEOs and vice presidents of significant organizations

spending two hours every night preparing for a one-hour class and you get the

picture of motivation that the system manages to instill even in the most

cynical entrant to the program. It's back to school with a difference as hands

shoot up even before the issue is raised by the faculty member taking the class.

Finally, look at the power of bringing real personalities into

discussions, and reporting their words and deeds as though happening right in

front your own eyes. In a very relevant case on the turnaround of Big Blue, IBM,

the introduction of project groups to focus on and nurture new business ideas

and the value of three horizon planning was explained. This approach, where new

businesses are identified and developed in an organic manner and transitioned

from a focus on project milestones to growth and then to profitability and a

return to the real world of mechanistic processes and reviews exemplifies the

need of the entire industry to look at more innovative value propositions,

before the cost and quality game is played out entirely and learnt by the

industry's global competitors.

What can our few venerable and many not so distinguished

institutions learn from the Harvard Business School? For an industry which needs

not millions but just a few tens of thousands of motivated and talented people

every year, there is real value in redesigning the educational systems in the

academic institutions in each company's immediate vicinity. A concerted effort

to identify the key issues and concepts that need to be learnt, must be

identified not by theoretical academicians but by industry practitioners. These

can then be used in the design of the most appropriate pedagogy for delivery-if

the case study creation takes too much time, the very least that can be done is

to bring in industry practitioners at critical segments of the course not as

"guest lecturer(s)" but as actual participating insiders to ensure

that the learner community gets a grasp of the real problem first hand, and is

able to appreciate the nuances of the solution.

And while the search for motivated and inspiring teachers will

continue to be one of the major problems the country will have to deal with, a

good curriculum and a good pedagogy, with adequate industry participation, will

surely go some distance in bridging the huge gap that currently exists between

the desired and delivered quality of education. Will this happen before much

more water flows down the Ganges in India and the Charles in Boston-only time

will tell!

Ganesh Natarajan