B-School Leads 'Net Revolution

Information technology is revolutionizing education and research at Harvard Business School (HBS), and Business School Dean Kim B. Clark '74 is leading the march with his centralized management system.

"We have the opportunity to take technology and use it at the heart of the school, to really bring it to the center of what we do, in the classroom, in the way we run the school," Clark says.

This past year, the HBS installed an intranet--a network like the Internet, but limited to members of the HBS community--and students and faculty are feeling its profound affects on learning and research.

Each class now has its own World Wide Web (WWW) page with detailed course outlines, assignments and audio and visual presentation materials from class.

Business School professors also post interactive case studies for students with video and audio clips and links to the Web sites of referenced companies.

And the professors update their own pages.

"When we say that every faculty member works on their own Web page, people don't believe us, but it's true," says Professor of Business Administration Richard L. Nolan.

Nolan credits HBS's successes in information technology to Clark's leadership and drive to make improvements.

"When Dean Clark [began in 1995], he said we were behind. By January we had caught up, and now we're six months ahead," Nolan says. "Leadership is key."

Every HBS student has a personalized web page with links to their classes, lists of daily assignments and notes from professors.

Faculty in the FAS say the same program could never be implemented in the College.

The changes at the Business School required an authority more centralized than FAS's, according to faculty.

In the HBS, "the Dean has much more central control over funding and programming than is the case in the far more decentralized FAS," says Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68.

Lewis says his favorite example of the centralized control of the HBS is its choosing one e-mail package for the entire school.

"I was told that there was a survey of the options, various programs and faculty groups made recommendations and pleas for special treatment, and then the dean made his decision, and the next morning there was one e-mail package left on the system," Lewis says.

"It would be very hard in FAS for anyone to say that certain software shall not be used.... One size clearly does not fit all in this environment," Lewis says.