Illustration by Antonio Giovanni Pinna

Illustration by Antonio Giovanni Pinna

Change is hard. I am reminded of this every time I get a new laptop and there are new, generational expectations that require me to hunt down videos of overly caffeinated youths walking me through otherwise banal tech-support items. (Mind you, this is coming from someone who managed to call 911 when changing the band on his smartwatch, so consider these complaints with that context.)

But the changes we made are weightier than your average tech annoyance. For 100 years, HBS published a Bulletin for its alumni. Launched in January 1925, it was an “experimentation in the work of maintaining contact between the School and alumni,” according to W.B. Donham, the School’s second dean. We didn’t take the challenge of disrupting a century-old brand lightly: Our new publication—with a new name, HBS magazine—represents the results of a two-year effort. Much of this work was fueled by alumni: We polled you, asked you big questions about how and why you engage with our content, and brought you into design-thinking workshops to get a deeper understanding of how we can survive that 30-second mail sort, to land on the coffee table instead of in the recycling bin.

The new name reflects a real change in our focus: We want to be a medium for the entire HBS community, including students, staff, faculty, and alumni. There are editorial and visual changes, too, intended to signal deep storytelling, build connections, and herald new ideas and voices. We hope this version of the magazine will better resemble a spirited classroom conversation—but without the anxiety of a potential cold call.

I know we asked much of you to help us make this change, but we still need to hear from you. What do you think about the redesign? Are there stories you think we should hear? What did we get right? Or wrong? Just, please, no tech questions—though I do have the names of a few excitable tech-support YouTubers I could send your way.

Dan Morrell
director, engagement communications
magazine@hbs.edu

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