HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

Business School's Global Alumni Conference Focuses on Impact of Information Technology

Information technology and its far-reaching impact on management education and business was the topic of the 1996 Harvard Business School Global Alumni Conference held in San Francisco last month. The event was sponsored this year by the Business School and the Business School (Alumni) Association of North Carolina.

In the midst of unprecedented change, industry restructuring, and product transformation in this country and abroad, more than 800 alumni and others from around the world convened at the Fairmont Hotel to participate in a program that examined a wide variety of important issues, including "Competition in the Information Age," "The Internet Revolution," and "The Technology Opportunities in Telecommunications."

The conference agenda included nine plenary sessions featuring addresses by Business School Dean Kim Clark, Senior Associate Dean Warren McFarlan, and prominent leaders from high-tech companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. In addition, in a series of 12 panel discussions, Business School faculty and industry executives examined the effect of technology on areas such as health care, product design, customer service, and entertainment. Harvard President Neil Rudenstine began the conference with welcoming remarks before the first plenary session. Participants also had the opportunity to attend an Internet workshop and to visit Silicon Valley firms.

Dean Clark's presentation addressed the topic "Harvard Business School at the Frontier: The Future of Management Education." During his remarks, Clark demonstrated the potential of new technology for management education (including a prototype of an electronic case study), and discussed the advantages for management education of new channels of communication and sources of information such as the Internet, the Intranet, and the World Wide Web.

Other HBS faculty taking part in the conference were Nancy Koehn, Marco Iansiti, Jeffrey Rayport, William Sahlman, Howard Stevenson, David Upton, Steven Wheelwright, and David Yoffie.

Among the corporate executives addressing the conference were Jeremy Coote, president, SAP America Inc.; Ilene Lang, vice president, Connectivity Software Division, Digital Equipment Corp.; Lewis Platt, chairman, president, and CEO, Hewlett-Packard; Phil Quigley, president and CEO, Pacific Telesis; Jon Sidgmore, president and CEO, UUNet Technologies Inc.; Steven Sprinkle, national managing director, Service Line, Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group; Vince Tobkin, director, Technology Practice, Bain & Co.; and John Warnock, chairman and CEO, Adobe Systems Inc.

The Harvard Business School Association numbers some 60,000 graduates of the School's M.B.A., doctoral, and executive education programs. It holds an annual conference each year examining a topic of global importance and interest. The 1997 conference will take place in Hong Kong.