In January, 50 HBS MBA students and 200 alumni and other business leaders gathered to discuss the business of artificial intelligence (AI). Over the course of four days, the hybrid global cohort analyzed cases, quizzed sector experts, and collaborated in design sprints. The alumni and practitioners joined virtually, from what Professor Karim R. Lakhani has taken to calling “the universe deck.” In the classroom and in the online chat for this short intensive program (SIP), participants debated how business leaders can best adapt to an AI-powered future.

The whole experience was an experiment, says Lakhani, the Dorothy and Michael Hintze Professor of Business Administration. In designing the Business of AI SIP, Lakhani had as his thought partner HBS executive fellow Vladimir Jacimovic (MBA 1992), founder of ContinuumLab.ai. The program was the first foray into building the Learning Network, one of four engagement platforms that represent an important component of the new Digital, Data, and Design Institute at Harvard (D^3). “We want to create a two-way street between our alumni and the School,” says Lakhani, who developed the concept for the Institute in close partnership with Jacimovic.

Offered even before the Institute “officially” launched, the Business of AI SIP was supported by the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard, which Lakhani co-directs, and the HBS Digital Initiative, led by its director, David Homa. Platforms such as the Learning Network will amplify the Institute’s work, explains Stefan Esposito, senior director of the Learning Network. “It will turn faculty research into programming that can have an immediate impact on both students and business leaders,” he says. Examples include conferences, webinars, and more SIPs, which offer access to cutting-edge research on a faster timeline than the traditional academic-publishing cycle enables.

The first step is to build on the success HBS has seen with online and hybrid learning and develop an ongoing curriculum of educational experiences in which alumni can engage in classroom discussions with each other, MBA students, faculty, and other practitioners on the most pressing business questions of the day. The second step is to harness the expertise of alumni to inform future research.

“Our alumni are doing interesting things all over the world,” Lakhani says. “HBS faculty can learn from them. The question for the Learning Network is, how can we systematically find and engage with alumni in specific sectors? How can the faculty learn from the vast experiences of the alumni community?” Lakhani also notes that “a crucial element of the Learning Network is to ensure that we can create a community of alums across geographies and graduation years so that new learnings and new opportunities are rapidly disseminated through the HBS network.”

The promise of the Learning Network was on display during the Business of AI SIP. Among the alumni participating were Kenneth Salas (MBA 2015), cofounder and chief operating officer of Camino Financial, and Morgan McKenney (MBA 2003), now CEO of the Provenance Blockchain Foundation. Both organizations aim to disrupt the financial sector to materially improve financial services, including expanding access to financial products to underserved communities through the use of new technologies.

Salas, who studied with Lakhani while he was a student at HBS, reconnected with the professor in 2020 after the publication of Competing in the Age of AI, the book Lakhani coauthored with Marco Iansiti, the David Sarnoff Professor of Business Administration. Salas was eager to be involved in this prototype of the Learning Network, and Lakhani asked him to join as both student and practitioner, sitting on a panel discussing AI in financial services. “My objective as a founder of an AI-driven company was to ground how we actually use it,” says Salas. “I wanted to give concrete examples of how AI is enabling us to provide financial services to communities that historically haven’t been able to get access to capital.” At the same time, conversations with other practitioners and classmates helped Salas envision a roadmap for how Camino Financial could better leverage data science as it continues to grow.

McKenney came to the Business of AI SIP during a sabbatical from her work in financial services. It was part of a self-designed study of the future of the sector and her place in it, which included extensive interviews with entrepreneurs and venture capitalists and several Executive Education classes, including an AI-focused course with Lakhani. Her experiences underscored the idea that “analog doesn’t scale and AI enables more access. It allows inclusiveness because you can do things in much cheaper ways, but solutions need to be designed thoughtfully.” For McKenney, the diverse backgrounds of the students in the SIP and the variety of ways to engage—in case discussions, practitioner Q&As, breakout brainstorming, and the ever-active chat box for online participants—sparked vital conversations that helped her think deeply about how to harness the power of AI ethically in her business ventures.

The approach Lakhani and Jacimovic took in developing the course was key to fostering those exchanges, McKenney says. The Institute’s founders consider the SIP an “innovation in progress,” a way to test theories about how best to bring timely research insights to those both on and off campus. “They were testing, iterating, improving—I think it was a big win for learning,” McKenney says about the design thinking process they used. “HBS is applying the innovation model to teaching, which will make it possible to creatively inspire engaged learning, share more information, and impact more people.”

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