HBS Students Partake in Global Immersion

A group of 935 first-year MBA students from Harvard Business School will set off to travel across the world as part of the FIELD Global Immersion Program. Students participating in the program worked with a network of global partners online and through conference calls to learn about the business they were assisting and helped to develop and refine the company’s product and service proposals.

Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development is a new component of the Harvard Business School’s case study curriculum. It is a required first-year course that spans a full academic year and is divided into three parts. The field method enhances the school’s capacity to educate leaders who make a difference in the world.

The idea behind these methods, case and field, is to provide a cycle of learning that involves learning through thinking, doing and reflecting on what students have learned. The first part of the FIELD program is leadership intelligence. The second part is global intelligence. This is the part of the program that involves the global immersion program.

Students will travel Jan. 5 to Jan. 12, 2015 out to their respective locations in to meet with their partners face-to-face to test their ideas. Before traveling to their prospective companies, students learn about product development and design thinking through FIELD course exercises and begin developing their new product or service proposal.

The project work generated by the student team for the company becomes the property of the Global Partner organization to implement as it sees fit.

regions: Boston

About the Author