Entrepreneurship at HBS:
A Message from Dean Clark
F ifty years ago, a new course was introduced at HBS to
provide students with a better understanding of the problems of
starting and managing new businesses. The Management of New
Enterprises, developed and taught by Professor Myles L. Mace, served
the needs of World War II GIs eager to launch entrepreneurial
ventures and make their mark in the business world. The course was
one of many postwar curriculum innovations introduced under the
leadership of Dean Donald K. David, and it was a significant
departure from more traditional classes aimed at training managers to
lead large, complex corporations. Yet the course attracted one
hundred students in its first year and became a fixture in the
elective MBA curriculum for two decades.
The popularity of The Management of New Enterprises and of related courses developed in the ensuing years underscores an interest in entrepreneurship among HBS students and graduates that has grown sharply over the decades. Last year, more than 15 percent of all elective credits in the MBA Program were earned in the School's courses on entrepreneurship. Moreover, in recent surveys, over half of all alumni describe themselves as entrepreneurs.
As you will read in this special Bulletin issue, our alumni have founded or helped to transform many important companies over the years. They have shaped the evolution of industries as diverse as cable television, microcomputer software, publishing, specialty retailing, investment banking, money management, direct marketing, consumer products, and consulting. Following Professor Georges F. Doriot's lead, our graduates have had a major impact on the venture capital industry, which in turn financed a revolution in semiconductors, personal computers, communications, and biotechnology industries where the newest generation of HBS alumni is helping chart the future.
Due in part to the imagination and determination of these pioneers
and to shifts in worldwide economic conditions, the very nature of
general management has undergone dramatic change in the last half
century. Business leaders in large and small companies alike now need
to be versed not only in running the established enterprise but also
in entrepreneurial action, which embraces change and seizes
opportunities. To borrow a phrase from Professor Howard H. Stevenson,
who has conducted groundbreaking research in this area at HBS over
the last fifteen years, entrepreneurship is "the pursuit of
opportunity beyond resources currently controlled." Given the dynamic
forces at work in today's economy and the intensity of worldwide
competition, the lessons of entrepreneurial management thus are
relevant to and critical to the ongoing success of companies of all
sizes.
The time is right, therefore, to
reaffirm the importance of entrepreneurship at HBS. To an extent that
would probably astonish Dean David, entrepreneurial management has
become an important focus of the School's research, course
development, and educational programs. Over the last decade, under
the leadership of Howard Stevenson, Bill Sahlman, and their
colleagues, HBS has greatly expanded its commitment to this area. Our
faculty have developed new ideas about launching and sustaining new
ventures that have changed the way people think about identifying
opportunity, creating resources, adapting to the unexpected, and
managing creativity. Important empirical and clinical work in venture
capital and private equity has shed new light on the structure,
governance, and impact of the venture capital firm.
All of this work has been linked closely to
the development of a significant body of teaching material and the
creation of new courses. There currently are six elective courses in
entrepreneurial management in the MBA curriculum with combined annual
enrollments of over 1,100. Seventeen faculty members are involved in
teaching, research, and course development in this area in both our
MBA and executive education programs. For a quarter of a century, our
Owner/President Management Program has set the standard for educating
entrepreneurial managers for leadership positions around the world.
The Presidents' Seminar, offered in conjunction with the Young
Presidents' Organization, is in its 44th year. The materials and
courses our faculty have developed are widely used in
entrepreneurship programs all over the world. Last year HBS
Publishing sold some 175,000 cases in entrepreneurship as well as
more than 12,000 books.
More important than these numbers, however, is the strategy behind this creation of intellectual capital. In the fall of 1996 Entrepreneurial Management (EM) became an operating unit of the School with a mandate to build and grow. Like the eleven other major faculty units, EM is not only an important administrative unit but a community pursuing an intellectual agenda a place where we can attract and develop outstanding people and pursue new ideas, courses, and research around significant broad-gauged topics and problems.
Our ability to attract outstanding faculty has been crucial to the
group's success. Our strategy has been to build the Entrepreneurial
Management team around full-time faculty drawn from diverse
disciplines and perspectives. The wealth of backgrounds of its
members facilitates this unit's ability to engage in intellectual
cross-fertilization with other groups at the School. The size and
quality of the group and our commitment to their work ensures a depth
and consistency in our entrepreneurship teaching and research that is
distinguished and
distinctive.
A
s we reflect on the 50th anniversary of
entrepreneurial studies at HBS in this special two-part Bulletin
series, we celebrate the remarkable accomplishments of our many
alumni entrepreneurs and the work of the HBS professors who helped to
inspire them. With over 24,000 graduates who claim the title
entrepreneur, it is impossible for us to share the stories of even a
fraction of those who have distinguished themselves in this field.
Nonetheless, in this series of articles we hope to convey a sense of
the pervasive influence the School's entrepreneurs have had on our
daily lives.
This anniversary is also a time to turn our eyes to the future and to the promise of new generations. We are in a period of extraordinary opportunity at the School, matched by students with extraordinary ability and promise. It is our mission to build a lifelong partnership in learning that will enable them, as alumni, to continue to create and shape the future of enterprise worldwide.