The first year of Dean Nitin Nohria’s tenure was marked by shaping and articulating a set of priorities for the School and harnessing innovation efforts across campus. In the year ahead, a number of those innovative ideas will move from the drawing board to the classroom and beyond.

Perhaps the most significant innovation is the new, yearlong Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development (FIELD) course in the first-year Required Curriculum. It aims to bridge the gap between learning and doing through team-based leadership development, global experiences, and integrated thinking activities. FIELD coursework will take place inside classrooms dubbed “hives” located on the top two floors of the former WGBH building on Western Avenue. The first floor of that building houses the Harvard Innovation Lab, scheduled to open this fall. The i-lab will bring together students and faculty from across the University to learn about entrepreneurship and to work on innovative ideas that may lead to new ventures. HBS has led in the development of the i-lab, which will also serve as a community resource for residents of the surrounding Allston neighborhood.

Curriculum innovation for second-year MBAs brings the introduction of the quarter system, which gives faculty more flexibility in the types of courses (and combinations of courses) they can offer, and students more options to explore a variety of interests.

Dean Nohria recently reflected on these changes as he moves into his second year in office.

Why has innovation emerged as such a priority for you?

Since becoming Dean I have studied the history of Harvard Business School quite closely, and I’m struck by the things that we take for granted that were once considered great innovations. The case method, for example, wasn’t with us from the day Harvard Business School was founded. It took 20 years to invent and perfect, and it’s now this extraordinary legacy.

Similarly, the internationalization of the Harvard Business School curriculum didn’t just happen. Kim Clark, when he was Dean, introduced the global research centers, which were a very distinctive way that we decided to pursue globalization.

So I have become very mindful that at a time when so many changes are taking place in the world, business education itself has been challenged to raise its game. We have to be innovative. We must have the courage to try new things, because that’s the only way we can honor the legacy of the School and create a foundation for future generations.

You have talked about the importance of balancing innovation with preservation of what has made the School great. How tricky is that balancing act?

Given how rich our traditions are, we never want to lose sight of them. They are embedded in the fabric of our School. But I don’t think we should let our traditions just drift forward. They need to go forward in the same purposeful way in which we think of moving forward on innovation.

So, for example, Youngme Moon senior associate dean, chair of the MBA Program has held periodic meetings with a group of faculty members to ask, “How can we strengthen the case method? How can we make sure that the quality of teaching remains as high as it has ever been?”

I have met with each first-year course head and asked, “How can you strengthen your core course?” Several have taken on that challenge. This form of continuous innovation and improvement, which has been so much at the heart of the School throughout our existence, is alive and well. And I’m encouraging that as much as anything else.

What value does FIELD add to the first-year students’ experience?

We all agreed that there were three areas in particular in which we wanted to improve the capacity of our students. First, we wanted to improve their leadership skills. So Module One of FIELD focuses on leadership — in particular, enhancing students’ emotional intelligence and self-awareness.

Module Two, global immersion, aims to develop students’ capacity for contextual intelligence. Teams will be assigned to work with companies in roughly a dozen different countries on the introduction of a new product or service. They’ll do a fair amount of advance preparation in Allston, and then during the January Term, they’ll travel to a company abroad to test whether their ideas actually work. We won’t make our students country experts, but we can make them better prepared to operate in a globalized world.

Module Three is designed to integrate what students have learned throughout the first year. We’re going to do that in the context of a start-up where teams will design and launch a new venture.

The FIELD course also comes with a new classroom design that facilitates teamwork. How did you develop this new classroom architecture?

It was an extraordinary process. We created a group of 20 people that cut across the School — faculty and administrative, Operations, and MBA Program staffs — and we asked the group to design a space that would best enable small-group teamwork.

Out of that creative brainstorming process, the idea of a “hive” emerged. Like a beehive, all the teams are working in these different areas, and yet there is a way for the instructor, who is now going to be in the middle of the classroom, as opposed to being in the pit, to facilitate and support the work that’s occurring. Like a beehive, we anticipate a buzz of activity.

So the plan is to have oval-shaped classrooms with a flat floor and movable chairs and tables. It can be easily restructured in many configurations. A section of 90 students, for example, can easily be divided into 15 groups of 6.

What curriculum innovations are second-year students experiencing this year?

Historically, we have structured the first and second years alike, with primarily 80-minute classes covering a full semester. Many of those courses will continue to exist. But over the past several years, faculty members have been pushing against that structural constraint and trying to imagine different possibilities for course offerings.

The quarter structure makes it easier for faculty to develop new courses. It’s a less daunting hurdle, particularly for junior faculty, when you’re planning 14 rather than 30 sessions. It also enables students to be more exploratory. For example, they can pair a short course with a short field-based course to apply what they have learned in the classroom. Generally, they’ll have more control in structuring their second year.

There are all kinds of MBA programs available today, including one-year, executive, online, and part-time. The question arises, what’s the value-added of HBS’s two-year residential program?

In the early 1900s when Harvard Business School was created, trade schools were the norm. They offered yearlong programs where you could learn bookkeeping or accounting.

Our ambition was higher than that: we wanted to immerse students in understanding business and developing a professional identity as business leaders. That cultivation of identity, as opposed to simply the development of useful skills, takes time. You don’t form identity overnight. That’s why, even as the world moves to all these other approaches, we remain convinced that a two-year immersive experience is the only way to create a transformational educational experience. The impact of the experience will be felt not just in how well prepared students are for their first job, but also in how much of what they learn will be useful over the course of their lifetimes.

How does the Harvard Innovation Lab fit into your broader push for innovation?

Even though so many of Harvard’s graduates, over the course of their careers, will become engaged in entrepreneurial ventures, Harvard Business School and Harvard University aren’t yet the schools that come first to mind when people think of innovation and entrepreneurship.

We have a huge opportunity to be a leader in this space. If you look across Harvard, the University is fortunate in attracting amazing people. And our hope is that the Harvard Innovation Lab will be a venue in which people from all parts of Harvard who have interesting ideas can connect with each other and learn how to translate these innovative ideas into entrepreneurial ventures.

A year into this job, what stands out as most surprising?

I always knew how much HBS meant to me in terms of my own personal and professional development. What has struck me is seeing that same deep connection played out in everyone I meet, whether alumni, faculty, staff, or students.

—Read more about Dean Nohria’s priorities for the School at http://www.hbs.edu/about/leadership/dean/Pages/priorities.aspx.

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