Dean Nitin Nohria on His Decade at HBS (2/2)

【Nitin Nohria, Beth Klarman, Seth Klarman (MBA 1982)

KlarmanHall Top-off Ceremony, April 2017】

In a conversation with the Bulletin, Nohria reflected on his time leading the School and how students and faculty mobilized to respond to the pandemic.

You led the creation of Tata Hall, Chao Hall, and Klarman Hall. In an increasingly online world, why invest so much in the physical campus?

When our campus was built, George F. Baker, our benefactor, said: “This school will not be judged by the magnificence of its buildings, but by the magnificence of the work that goes on inside of them.” That’s a profound piece of wisdom that guides how we think of our campus to this day. A great campus is an inviting campus. For instance, we could ask our Exec Ed students to live in hotels, as other schools do. Instead, we have them come to our campus to live and study together, which leads to close, lifelong friendships they wouldn’t make otherwise. Each of the buildings we’ve opened helps make the School a yet more magnetic place that attracts and connects people. And they help us do magnificent work inside of them. I believe people will seek out physical places like HBS that can create a unique sense of social intimacy even more in an increasingly digital world.

How did you approach the evolving challenges last spring, when the School suddenly shifted to remote learning at mid-semester, and this past summer, when it was clear that fall 2020 would require a hybrid approach?

The first challenge we confronted was to move all our classes online after spring break. It was a marvel to see the School rally to tackle this challenge. Srikant Datar, our new dean, led a working group that mobilized faculty members experienced in teaching online to help those with no experience get ready (thank heavens for the early investments we made in HBX, now HBS Online). Our IT team did wonders to get everyone the technology and connectivity to teach, learn, and work from home. Staff across the School volunteered to train as online facilitators to provide technical support to the faculty. Student leaders showed great ingenuity in reimagining social experiences online, including the annual HBS Show. As a result of these collective efforts, our transition to remote learning and working went smoother than anyone had imagined.

Building on these learnings, we created a system to operate in a hybrid environment over the summer. We wanted students to return to campus and our classrooms to give them as much of the full HBS experience as possible. At the same time, we did everything possible to ensure their safety. By engaging faculty, students, and staff to problem-solve together, we struck this delicate balance and reopened the campus in the fall.

Since then, we have used the metaphor of a dimmer switch as our guide—allowing for more on-campus activities, including hybrid classes, when the virus is under control (as we saw from August to October) and moving some activities online when the virus becomes more widespread (as happened in early November). We also transitioned many of our Executive Education programs into a virtual delivery model leveraging the Live Studio technology pioneered by HBX. The operating flexibility we have built should serve us well through the rest of this pandemic and even into the future.

Do you expect the remote learning the School did in 2020 to affect the faculty’s long-term thinking about the need for face-to-face classes versus online experiences?

Our response to the pandemic has revealed an interesting duality. On the one hand, we have discovered that online learning can be far more effective than we might have initially imagined. At the same time, our experience has reinforced how much our faculty, students, and staff still yearn for the spontaneity and energy of in-person interactions. In the future, we believe the demand for our intimate, in-person educational experience will remain strong. Simultaneously, we will be able to enhance and extend our educational offerings through our growing online capabilities.

How do you assess the School’s relationship with its alumni?

I remember an alum coming back for his 75th reunion. He was nearly 100 years old and had just two living classmates. Yet it meant so much to him to return to our campus as he had never missed a reunion. He epitomizes the extraordinary commitment of our alumni. By raising $1.4 billion during our capital campaign, our alumni showed how devoted they are to the School and its mission. Our alumni are looking for a lifelong relationship with the School. We have started to engage them in many more ways and hope, in the future, to meet alumni at any point in their life when we can deliver an educational experience they find valuable. No school is better positioned than we are to create a set of offerings that serve alumni throughout the arc of their careers and lives.

Do you worry that the traditional, two-year, full-time MBA is losing relevance?

Punctuated equilibrium is a concept in evolutionary biology. It suggests that evolution occurs through long periods of incremental change, punctuated by occasional periods of extraordinary transformation. It’s a useful way to look at the field of MBA education. The dominant model, created by schools like ours in the early 20th century, was the two-year, full-time MBA degree, and with minor variations, it was almost ubiquitous until around 2000. Since then, we’ve been in a punctuated period of rapid experimentation and change. We see many one-year, online, and executive programs challenging the two-year model. That’s because the real opportunity costs of going to school for two years are increasing. Yet, the demand for business education as a whole is expanding because people now have more ways to access it. Does this pose a serious threat to two-year programs? I don’t think so because many more people than we can admit still want the full two-year MBA experience at a high-quality program like ours. At the same time, we need to prepare for a world where people will consume business education in many different ways.

Why do you frequently talk and write about the problem of the public’s falling trust in business?

I’ve always believed the business enterprise is one of society’s great inventions. It’s one of the most powerful mechanisms by which we can increase prosperity. Businesses enable economic self-reliance, which is essential to human dignity. At its core, business is a powerful source for good. But like any powerful instrument, it can also do harm—by polluting the environment or exacerbating inequality, for example. Keeping business on a path where it’s seen as a force for good is deeply important. When society loses trust in business, everyone is worse off. We need to educate leaders who will regain and rebuild society’s trust in business.

Fifty years from now, how do you hope future deans look back on your tenure?

Darwin famously said that it is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change. I hope people who look back on my tenure will see it as a time when the School became more comfortable and capable of experimenting at scale and increased its adaptive capacity. That would make me very happy, because who knows what the future will bring.

On January 1, you begin a one-year sabbatical. What are your plans after that?

Before I became dean, I thought the single best job in the world was to be a professor at Harvard Business School, so I can readily imagine returning to that role. On the other hand, moments when you can take a completely fresh look at what the future might hold come rarely in life. So I want to use my sabbatical to fully explore what would give me the greatest fulfillment and joy in the future. One thing is for sure: Whatever I do next, I will always be a loyal and devoted member of the Harvard Business School community.

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