A Constructive Summer at HBS
Finance Conference Explores Research Methodlogies
Four Promoted to Full Professor
New Chairman Updates Developments in MBA Program
Alumni Ticker: A Random Sampling of HBS Graduates in the News

• Peter Castenfelt (MBA '72): Dateline Belgrade
• Lorne Adraine (MBA '83): Wisdom and a special cause
• Amy Love (MBA '93): You goal, girl
• William Hubbard (MBA '49): Running on empty
• Peter Norton (13th OPM): White knight in the rye

New Chairman Updates Development in MBA Program

In June, W. Carl Kester, the School's Industrial Bank of Japan Professor of Business Administration, was appointed senior associate dean and MBA Program chair (succeeding Professor and Senior Associate Dean Steven C. Wheelwright). The Bulletin recently asked Kester to discuss some of the key features of today's MBA experience.

We all know that the effective use of technology is a priority at the School. How is this influencing the MBA Program?

Technology is a huge part of the MBA experience. It is something today's students are going to live with and manage as executives, and we want this campus to be a model of best practice for them. On the academic front, in addition to a burgeoning number of technology-related courses in the curriculum, students use technological tools - interactive cases, for instance - in their class preparation. The MBA administration is making better use of technology, as well. Among many examples, entering students can now prepare for HBS online, as well as find their schedules, courses, and assignments online once they arrive. Prospective students can access admissions information and applications online. We're using technology to leverage our ability to provide more efficient and customized services.

What are some of the changes in the Admissions area?

This year we are putting more resources into marketing - both to the world in general and, in particular, to underrepresented groups that we are interested in attracting. For example, we've embarked on an aggressive campaign to increase our profile abroad. The Class of 2001 will be more than one-third international, which is a huge jump. We have also increased fellowship funding by about $2.5 million for next year. In coordination with Citibank, we are offering a new source of financial aid to students - the CitiAssist Loan Program - that has made aid available to a wider cross section of students. In addition, we are working even harder to reach women and minority candidates.

Is there a difference today in how incoming students prepare for the MBA experience?

As much as possible, we're trying to move the basic building-block skills out of the required curriculum and into prematriculation. Our goal is to free up time for students to delve more deeply into the economic logic required to solve problems and into the larger general management issues of designing and implementing solutions.

In order to help students prepare, we have developed an innovative prematriculation program, most of which is online. Our Prematriculation and Academic Services teams have developed a first-rate Web site where admitted students can take care of administrative issues as well as complete some self-assessments. They can measure their accounting, quantitative reasoning, and writing skills to determine their strengths and weaknesses in order to better prepare themselves for the Program.

In addition, for the first time we are running an on-site Analytics Program before the MBA Program starts. In August, about one hundred students from the September cohort were able to sharpen their analytical skills, review accounting, and get ready for the rigorous program to follow. We'll have a similar program for the January cohort in the winter.

Give us an update on the required curriculum.

We have eliminated the Foundations II program and moved its content elsewhere into the required curriculum. The Society and Enterprise module, for instance, has been integrated into the General Management course, and the Economics and Markets material is covered in Competition and Strategy. We now have one three-week Foundations program, which provides a few courses to give students a better foundation for the curriculum and a very important acculturation experience. The end result is that we can now go into more depth in the required curriculum.

Are there any new developments in the elective curriculum?

In the past two years we have seen an exponential growth in the number of field studies. Last year there were over two hundred different field study groups of between three and five students. There were also two new field study seminars: Women Building Business and Building Information Age Businesses. The advantage of these courses is that they allow students to take what they learn in the classroom, apply it in the field, and then discuss it with their classmates. I think this trend in field-based learning is a reflection of the strong entrepreneurial interest on the part of students today.

Many of the field studies are oriented toward problems faced by small companies. Running and Growing the Small Company, an elective taught by Paul Marshall and Kent Bowen, picks up on this theme. We've got a lot of fascinating electives, including Joe Badaracco's The Moral Leader, in which students look at business ethics by studying literature and philosophy.There is a great deal of innovation in the elective curriculum across the board.

What's the latest on community standards efforts at the School?

We believe that the way you lead is as important as the accomplishments you achieve. The community standards of respect, integrity, and accountability have always been implicit and widely shared here at the School, and we have now articulated them more clearly and established processes to help make them an even more tangible part of the HBS experience. These three qualities are accepted by students upon their admission to HBS, and we discuss them in depth when students first arrive - as part of the Foundations curriculum - and subsequently throughout the Program.

We have a new community standards manager who oversees this area, investigates alleged infractions, and helps decide cases of minor infractions. We also have a panel of faculty, students, and staff who review cases that involve more serious infractions and determine sanctions if warranted. Finally, there is a community standards committee charged with education, evaluation, and strategic thinking in this area.

Are there new trends in our students' career choices?

There is a surge of interest in high technology, small companies, and more entrepreneurial kinds of jobs. I think that reflects the economic realities of the times; market valuations are high, and the job opportunities can be very inviting in these businesses. The excitement surrounding the annual student Business Plan Contest also illustrates the enormous amount of interest and motivation in that field.

In response to this interest, our Career Services group has been helping students reach out to these sorts of companies and to get in contact with them through initiatives such as the High-Growth Career Fair and the immensely popular "career treks" cosponsored by student clubs, which involve students in visits to high-tech companies in other cities. Career Services has also developed sophisticated online services to help students network and pursue job searches. Many recent grads have been creative and successful in their entrepreneurial ventures, and I think it is a trend that will continue.

 

 

 

A Random Sampling of HBS Graduates in the News

. . . . . . Dateline Belgrade. . . . . .

Slobodan Milosevic's decision to withdraw Serb forces from Kosovo last spring was helped along by a surprising secret envoy: Peter Castenfelt (MBA '72), chairman of Archipelago Enterprises, a London-based financial firm. Reporting that Castenfelt had met privately with Milosevic and had composed a breakthrough memorandum while riding out a NATO bombing raid in a Belgrade bunker, the Financial Times (June 14, 1999) asserted that Castenfelt was instrumental "in convincing the Yugoslav leadership of the need to end the war."

Castenfelt has long enjoyed the trust of the Russian government, dating back to 1990 when he agreed to act as an advisor to the financially strapped Bolshoi Theatre. It was the first of several pro bono projects the Swedish-born Castenfelt undertook in Russia, and it eventually led the Yeltsin administration to appoint him as an official advisor on economic issues. In this capacity, he became a frequent interlocutor between financial institutions in Russia and the West, particularly the IMF.

Because the Russians felt that Milosevic was not comprehending NATO's position and demands, they brought in Castenfelt, who, after briefings by top Western officials, met with the Serb leader. Castenfelt "explained to us for the first time what the truth was," said a source close to the leadership of the Serbian security services. "We had never heard it before."

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With interest in women's sports and professional leagues soaring, Amy Love (MBA '93) decided it was high time for a publication that would cover the new scene in a serious manner. Instead of simply transposing traditional women's magazine subjects into a sports context (with articles, say, on sports fashion), Love's new magazine, Amy Love's REAL SPORTS, offers analysis of teams and players, methods for improving game skills and performance, and profiles of sports heroines. With an eye to the more than thirty million high-school and adult women who play sports, "We're about real athletes, real action, and the drama of competition," Love explained to the San Francisco Chronicle (June 18, 1999).

Love, who publishes the magazine in San Jose, California, knows that the attrition rate is high for new magazines. But REAL SPORTS (www.real-sports.com), currently a quarterly that aspires to be a monthly by 2001, has solid corporate backing and features freelance writers from some of the country's top publications, Love pointed out. And she knows she's riding the crest of a social phenomenon. "Young girls today show up at women's sporting events believing they can one day be that player out on the field," she said. "There's no longer a reason for that to be a wild dream. It really can come true."

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Does an invention that would guarantee motorists they'd never run out of gas sound like a good investment? Hundreds of venture capital firms didn't think so, but that didn't stop Maryland retiree William Hubbard (MBA '49), a former executive at Shell Oil and Amoco Chemical. According to Business Week (June 29, 1999), using $10,000 in savings and working in a partner's garage, Hubbard discovered a way to remove the volatile elements from gasoline. Rendered inert and nonflammable, the resulting liquid product - dubbed "SpareTank" - can be stored safely in the trunk of a car. When combined with the gallon or so of gasoline that typically remains in a car's fuel system even when the gas gauge reads empty, SpareTank becomes flammable, and presto, you're on your way. "It's one of the great problem-solving products of all time," said Dennis D'Angelo, the merchandising director of QVC, which began selling SpareTank in June.

Now available at Kmart and other chains for less than $20 a gallon, SpareTank could generate as much as $15 million in sales this year and may soon be adopted as a standard feature by a major automaker. Some skeptics contend that SpareTank won't catch on, but as Business Week concluded, "Hubbard hopes to show [them] his taillights, speeding all the way to the bank."

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When Sotheby's recently auctioned off fourteen love letters that reclusive author J.D. Salinger had written 27 years ago to Joyce Maynard, his then college-age companion, many observers derided Maynard's decision to sell the letters, deeming the entire matter a depressing spectacle even by today's minimal standards of civility. So it was like a breath of fresh air when, as the New York Times (June 23, 1999) reported, the winning bidder for the letters, Peter Norton (13th OPM), announced his intention "to do whatever Mr. Salinger indicates to me he wants done with them." Said Norton,"He may want them returned. He may want me to destroy them. He may not care at all." Norton, who paid $169,411.25 for the letters, has never met Salinger.

The founder of Peter Norton Computing, makers of Norton Utilities software programs, Norton sold his business in 1990 and now devotes his time to art collecting and philanthropy. His grand gesture toward Salinger was complemented by his charitable view of Maynard, the target of unfavorable comment from many quarters, not the least of which was the National Review, which dubbed her an "opportunistic one-time nymphet." Maynard, the divorced mother of three, "had a right, really a duty to herself and her children, to safeguard their economic security," said Norton, adding that the sale and its circumstances were filled with "moral ambiguity."

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Harvard Business School has contributed a six-figure gift to the new Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, which will be established as an integral part of Harvard University as a result of Radcliffe College's merger with the University. The HBS gift will provide critical support for the new Institute.

"This is an exciting moment," noted HBS Dean Kim B. Clark in presenting the gift to outgoing Radcliffe President Linda S. Wilson and Mary Maples Dunn, who assumed the top leadership post at Radcliffe this summer. "Given the Business School's relative youth when compared with the University's venerable history, I recognize the significance of support at the early stages of a new venture." In response, Wilson noted, "Dean Clark's gift is deeply valued for the colleagueship it represents as well as the innovative capacity it provides. The productive relationship the Business School and Radcliffe have long enjoyed will have new opportunities to flourish with the establishment of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study."

Because the gift is not restricted to a specific Radcliffe Institute program, it will qualify for a 100 percent match from the Radcliffe 20th Century Challenge Fund, which was established last year to encourage unrestricted donations.

The new Radcliffe Institute will be an academic community where individuals can pursue advanced work in the academic disciplines, professions, or creative arts. Within this broad purpose, the Institute will sustain a commitment to the study of women, gender, and society. The Institute will also offer nondegree educational programs and contribute to the education of students in Harvard's degree programs, as well as to the experiences of undergraduates.

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