The mbaMission Podcast: Harvard Business School’s Online and Executive Education Programs? | Ep 127

In Episode 127 of The mbaMission Podcast, mbaMission Senior Consultant Harold Simansky talks with Patrick Mullane, executive director of Harvard Business School (HBS) Online and Executive Education, and Simeen Mohsen, senior managing director of HBS Online. Together, Patrick and Simeen describe what HBS has built beyond its degree programs over the past decade and where artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to take these offerings going forward.

 

Why Did HBS Reverse Course on Online Learning?

Patrick recounts that early in the 2010s, HBS’s then-dean, Nitin Nohria, was asked at an employee town hall meeting about whether the school would expand into online education. He answered that it would not happen while he was dean but then reversed course fairly soon after. At roughly this same time, Coursera began to emerge from Stanford, and MIT and Harvard jointly launched the educational platform edX. Notes Patrick, “I think he [Nohria] realized that we’re going to look like a dinosaur if we’re not doing something.” And in 2014, HBX was established to deliver the school’s renowned case-method pedagogy to online students.

How Many People Participate in HBS Online and Executive Education Each Year?

Patrick estimates that the current portfolio includes upwards of 35 online programs and approximately 70 in-person executive education programs a year. Roughly 12,500 people take advantage of the school’s in-person offerings each year, and as many as 40,000 participate in HBS’s online courses. 

For Whom Are the In-Person Executive Education Programs Designed?

Participants in HBS’s in-person programs already have some measure of business experience; they are not coming directly from undergraduate study. The focus programs are generally one week in duration and concentrate on a specific discipline or topic. The longer programs are aimed at slightly older participants—often middle managers, division managers, and even chief executive officers—and confer HBS alumni status. Patrick explains that alumni status gives graduates of the qualifying programs access to the alumni database, the right to present themselves as HBS alumni on LinkedIn, and membership in alumni clubs around the world. Although HBS offers executive education courses, it does not award an executive MBA degree. 

How Do the Online and In-Person Programs Fit Together?

Patrick says the two formats largely serve distinct audiences, given that people who choose an in-person program want to be on campus, whereas people who opt for HBS’s online programs typically do so because they cannot get to campus, cannot afford the in-person option, or do not have as much time to dedicate to their studies. Some longer executive education programs involve a blended format, in which participants intermittently come to campus for a week and complete distance learning between visits. Simeen adds that HBS Online courses can serve as preparation for longer in-person programs—such as financial accounting—so all participants arrive at a common level. 

Can an Online or Executive Education Program Lead to an MBA?

Rather than people using an executive education program as preparation for a full-time MBA program, Patrick has seen the opposite, with MBA graduates returning to school to complete executive education offerings. He tells the story of one participant who started out taking HBS Online courses, then attended an in-person event for online participants, and seven years later, graduated from HBS’s Program for Leadership Development, one of the programs that confers alumni status. Simeen describes how some learners stack programs across their career, referencing one participant who has taken 28 of the school’s online certificate programs, and calls the pattern a mosaic of pathways rather than a single route.

How Has HBS Managed Concerns About Cannibalization?

When online learning began at HBS, cannibalization and brand dilution were the school’s two big concerns. Patrick would remind faculty members who approached him about the cannibalization issue that HBS itself had taught him that it is better for an organization to cannibalize itself than let someone else do it. He adds that ultimately, HBS has “expanded the pie” rather than splitting it, estimating that of the 30,000 to 40,000 people who take an online HBS course each year, no more than 10,000 might have considered pursuing a full-time MBA. He also cites the school’s mission to educate leaders who make a difference in the world and the dean’s position that doing everything with excellence protects the brand. He reports that worries have subsided over time.

How Is AI Changing the In-Person Programs?

According to Patrick, AI is everything right now in the evolution of HBS’s in-person programs, but the situation is complicated by two specific difficulties. The first is that clients, whether individuals or companies, often arrive without knowing what they need from AI. The second is that integrating AI into the curriculum involves licenses for tools, cost factors, operational factors, and privacy factors when participants work with company material in a large language model. He says the school’s dean has been aggressive on the question, and even though HBS has moved further than most schools in trying to figure it out, progress sometimes involves taking one step forward and two steps back.

How Do Online and Executive Education Feed Back into the Two-Year MBA Program?

Both Simeen and Patrick assert that the same core faculty members teach across the portfolios. Professors use content created for online courses in the MBA classroom, many online courses feature newly written cases that add to the school’s case portfolio, and faculty members test new cases in executive education before bringing them into the MBA classroom—and vice versa. In addition, HBS hosts on-campus mixers in the fall and spring to allow MBA students and executive education participants to connect. Patrick views the school’s executive education and online courses as opportunities to test ideas before they are integrated into the full-time MBA program.

What Surprises HBS Executive Education Participants the Most?

The living group aspect of the residential experience is what Patrick states most surprises HBS’s executive education participants. After that is the quality of the teaching, which he says people tend to greatly underestimate. With respect to the case method, Patrick says, “St. Thomas Aquinas said about faith that for those who have it, no explanation is necessary. For those who don’t, no explanation will suffice. I always say that’s the same about the case method. If you’ve been through it, you get it. If you haven’t, it’s hard for me to explain to you why it’s really, really powerful.” 

What Comes Next for HBS Online and Executive Education?

Simeen reports that HBS’s online program will continue to innovate around how learners use their time. “Their time is incredibly valuable,” she says. “So we want to make sure every minute counts.” She adds, “We are using AI every day in what we do, and I continue to see that evolving, but all of it is focused around the delivery of learning to the participant.” On the executive education side, Patrick says the core will remain strategy and leadership—helping business leaders understand how new technology and geopolitics affect their organizations—while the school determines how best to bring AI into the classroom. Another area of focus is how to serve entrepreneurs who will not pursue an MBA but have specific, time-sensitive learning needs.

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