PETALING JAYA: Harvard Business School (HBS) has chosen Malaysia to host its third overseas campus outside the US, after China and India, The Malaysian Reserve (TMR) reported today.
The business newspaper quoted sources close to the development as saying the Malaysian government and Harvard University’s graduate business school had recently reached an understanding to set up the campus in Kuala Lumpur.
The sources said Prime Minister Najib Razak is expected to make an official announcement on the matter.
A delegation comprising HBS management officials and professors recently visited Malaysia for a final discussion and site visit.
“The delegation was also brought to visit some successful Malaysian firms, for them to discover the case studies and business journal potentials in this country as well.
“They (the delegation) were amazed at some of the corporate turnaround and success stories that the companies had to share,” the sources told TMR.
They said the Harvard Centre in Malaysia would emulate the concept of existing Harvard Centres in Shanghai, China, and Mumbai, India.
“The Harvard Centre will be offering key leadership executive programmes which are well recognised in the global job market.”
As part of the understanding reached to date, the proposed Harvard Centre will train 10 Malaysian professors annually to produce Harvard-standard journals which can later be published by the US university.
“One professor from HBS will be based in Kuala Lumpur to train the local professors.
“The delegation felt that there are adequate resources in the Malaysian economy and corporate sectors to be written as journals, thus making it available in Harvard’s archive for future reference,” one source said.
HBS is the graduate business school of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts.
It offers a large full-time master of business administration programme, doctoral programmes and various executive education programmes.
HBS launched its first executive education programme in 1945. Since then, the programmes have been attended by almost 200,000 business leaders from 200 countries.
Among notable alumni of HBS are Bank Negara Malaysia governor Muhammad Ibrahim, businessman Michael Bloomberg, former US president George W Bush, Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Indian industrialist Ratan Tata.