Indian professor named Harvard B-school Dean

Indian professor named Harvard B-school Dean


MUMBAI: In his 2003 book ‘What Really Works: The 4+2 Formula For Sustained Business Success’, Nitin Nohria explores six business practices that winning corporates juggle to stay ahead. The juggling metaphor isn’t incidental. Like everything else, the newly-designated dean of Harvard Business School (HBS) does, it’s well thought out. As he explains, juggling three balls needs loads of practice and keeping four in the air is really tough. Those who can take on six balls are the masters and there are very few such jugglers in the world.

I won’t go into the six practices he lists as crucial to business success — the book is easily available for those who might want to read it — but Mr Nohria himself has always managed to keep several balls in the air in his road to stardom in academia. For one, he is a wonderful teacher. Intense and passionate about his subject, he keeps students totally engaged in the classroom, orchestrating case studies discussions with a dramatic flair that is mesmerising.

Secondly, the IIT-Bombay and Sloan School of Business alumnus is a great researcher. What Really Works, for example, was based on a study of 160 companies and 200 management strategies over a period of ten years, a massive research project by any standards, designed and executed by him, in league with colleagues William Joyce and Bruce Roberson.

Thirdly, he has great inter-personnel skills. Outside of the classroom, and even within it, he’s a great conversationalist. When I met him eight years ago, for the first time, in the Nohria apartment on Napean Sea Road (his father Kewal Nohria was for long the chairman of Crompton Greaves), the topic he wanted to be interviewed on was ‘conversations, the importance of.’ One of his closest friends in academia was the late Sumantra Ghoshal of London Business School, and I recall Mr Nohria saying that some of his best ideas came out of conversations with his friend.

Fourth, he works perfectly in a team. In the early 2000s, along with Krishna Palepu and Das Narayandas, he pioneered Harvard’s foray into executive education (and research) in India, regularly conducting programmes for the Tata management and the All India Management Association at the Tata Management Training Centre in Pune. With their varied expertise — Mr Palepu in finance, Mr Narayandas in marketing and Mr Nohria in organisational behaviour — the three Harvard professors then made for a powerful troika.

There are few who can juggle a fifth, but Mr Nohria has one more ball in the air as he starts his term as dean of HBS. He’s an expert on leadership. As author of books like ‘The Arc Of Ambition: Defining the Leadership Journey’ and ‘Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices’, he knows the theory. He’s also the author of ‘Paths To Power: How Insiders and Outsiders Shaped American Business Leadership’, which should be relevant to him as the very first dean of Indian origin at HBS.

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