5 Things I Learned While At Harvard Business School

This month marks four years since I graduated from Harvard Business School! 👨‍🎓 And I can definitely say that I came out very different from when I went in; on top of that, I ended up learning things that I never even anticipated I would.

As is HBS tradition, I'm going to spend some time to reflect on my journey so far.

5. Reading business case studies quickly. Over the course of my two years at HBS, I read about 500 case studies! That's two-to-three case studies every single weekday. While I can only recall some of the case studies vividly (Benihana, Jean-Claude Biver, Casper, Cranberry, Apple, WhatsApp), the real skills that I learned were reading information quickly, assimilating the available information, forming a strong point of view, and being open to other perspectives. The first few probably took me two-hours each. But by the end of it, I could read an entire case in 20-30 mins and have a good enough understanding of the situation and my plan of action!

4. Writing. HBS' case studies account for approximately 30% of the university's annual revenues; this is because many other schools use HBS' case studies in their own MBAs and other courses. So I wrote a case study of my own at HBS to get a glimpse into how that system works. It was a fascinating project on how to gather appropriate data and summarize the current situation without writing from a biased point of view. I was able to write a case study that explores topics like network effects, multi-homing, monetization, M&A, strategy, and more.