Nitin Nohria, the new Harvard Business School dean: IIT taught him to think out of box

Nitin Nohria, the new Harvard Business School dean: IIT taught him to think out of box

After spending four years on the verdant Powai campus of IIT-Bombay, 21-year-old Nitin Nohria surely knew one thing: "I did not want to be a chemical engineer. That is the most important thing I learned in IIT." But when he came to receive his distinguished alumnus award in 2007, he told the institute director Ashok Misra that it was here that he learnt to think out of the box. The year 1984 was when this young chemical engineer walked out of his dull whitewashed room, his was the time when hostel life had seen some luxurious additions — ceiling fans had just been installed and students were charged Rs 20 a month for that comfort.

Nohria was a popular name during those years; he was on several student committees, recalled Shanta Sreeraman, a staff member who has been with the institute for over three decades. Young Nohria spent time mixing chemicals and his teacher Arvind Kuchadkar would watch him and tell himself that the young lad was cut out for management. "His interest was not limited to engineering. I could see his leaning towards a variety of subjects including humanities and management."

In fact, Kuchadkar who has been in touch with his student believes, "Nitin will bring freshness to Harvard because of all that he has picked up while carving his niche in management with ethics." Son of K K Nohria, former chairman of Crompton Greaves, did go on to study management at the Sloan School of Business at MIT.

Later he went on to become the youngest professor when he went to Harvard in 1988, and now, the youngest dean. Nohria, said K P Madhavan , his former faculty at IIT-B, who used to see him play football, he has only upped the bar for himself. Nohria's book — Master Passions — his former teachers says, reflects a kind of truth few human beings want to even acknowledge. The book, coauthored with a faculty from the Toronto University, gets under the skin of human beings — it delves into the rational explanation of every action and reveals that there "often lies a willingness to hurt or even destroy others to fuel our own ambitions or quench the fires of envy".

A student who did not make it to the IIT in the first round, Nohria has not shied away from taking the tough road. Or for that matter, ask harsh questions. "Why is there a disconnect between mission and everyday practice?" he asks in his work 'Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice' As the new HBS head, he'll probably bridge those two points, and that's why his former teacher S L Narayanamurthy believes he'll live up to the HBS's formal mission statement: "to educate leaders who make a difference in the world."

How HBS selects its dean

There is an advisory committee of the business school that Drew Faust, the Harvard University president, consults. The committee takes a view of probable candidates who could become the dean of the business school. Over several months, Faust consulted the 15-member advisory committee that consisted of 12 faculty members from the B-School itself and three professors from other schools within the University.

They met almost every week. The Harvard president also sought advice from other members of the Business School community for selecting the dean.

Nohria will succeed Jay Light, who in December 2009 announced his retirement at the end of the 2009-10 academic year. Light served as HBS dean for five years and spent four decades as HBS faculty member.

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