Harvard Business School To Open Program in Mumbai

The Harvard Business School is fine-tuning plans for an executive development program classroom in Mumbai, India, reflecting the school’s initative for a greater global reach.

Business School Dean Nitin Nohria is currently spend two weeks traveling to Mumbai, London, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and San Francisco to hear the perspectives of alumni, business leaders, and supporters of the school. By entrenching executive education programs in the second most populous city in the world, Nohria hopes to “extend our international work even further,” Business School Communications Officer Brian Kenny wrote in an e-mail from Mumbai.

The new executive development program classroom will not be the first appearance made by the Business School in India. The school opened a research center in the city in 2005, and has been offering executive education programs in India for approximately three years, according to Kenny.

The Business School has no plans to build a full-fledged campus and to compete with MBA programs at Indian business schools, according to The Economic Times. The project remains in its developing stages, and “we don’t have any details to announce at this time,” Kenny said.

The Business School has long been committed to expanding its international reach. The school launched the world’s first executive education program—called the Advanced Management Program—in 1945. Since then, over 9,000 leaders from around the globe have enrolled in programs at the Business School and at off-campus locations.

In the past decade, the school has opened executive education facilities internationally—a recent example is the Harvard Center Shanghai, a presentation and research space that serves as a venue for executive education programs. The Business school has also established regional research centers in Europe, Latin America, India, and Japan over the past two decades, according to Kenny.

“With the help of these international facilities...HBS faculty have written hundreds of new cases that reflect the global nature of management challenges today,” Kenny said.

—Staff writer Xi Yu can be reached at xyu@college.harvard.edu.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

CORRECTION: August 3, 2010

An earlier version of the July 31 news article "Harvard Business School To Open Program in Mumbai" incorrectly stated that Business School Dean Nitin Nohria is currently in Mumbai for a two-week stint. In fact, he is spending two weeks not exclusively in Mumbai, but is traveling to London, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and San Francisco as well.