Long a mainstay of the required MBA curriculum at HBS, the General Management (GM) course has been renamed and retooled. Its new name, The Entrepreneurial Manager (EM), reflects a sharpened focus on topics crucial to creating and managing companies in today's high-speed business climate.

In announcing the change, MBA Program Chair and Senior Associate Dean W. Carl Kester emphasized the need to address new management challenges, such as increased competition from abroad and from companies that are taking advantage of disruptive technologies. "The Internet in particular has enabled many more companies to be formed, and the capital markets have been more than willing to finance the competitive onslaught," Kester observed. "These changes in the economy are being led by our graduates and are also reflected in our students' heightened interest in entrepreneurial activities."

Kester noted that a general management course focused on entrepreneurial aspects of management is in keeping with the changes confronting all managers in the global economy. "This represents the latest stage in the evolution of the GM course at HBS," he said. "The term 'general management' has traditionally been associated with the high-level administration of large, complex, and relatively stable businesses. In EM, the basic principles developed in the general management course will continue to be central, but the decision-making contexts will be more varied." The new course will include materials on managers who create, shape, adapt, and manage enterprises of all descriptions -- whether small or large, new or established, nonprofit or for-profit.

In keeping with previous general management courses, EM will help students integrate skills and perspectives developed in other required curriculum courses. Cases will be drawn from existing entrepreneurship courses and from the GM course, and new cases will be developed as needed. Faculty from the Entrepreneurial and Service Management unit will oversee the course, which is being taught this term to students enrolled in the September cohort of the Class of 2001.

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