Harvard Business School faculty are augmenting the school’s signature case method by integrating artificial intelligence simulations, avatars, and live exercises into its classrooms — an expansion of the school’s AI push that now extends beyond a single required course.
The efforts build on HBS’s introduction last year of Data Science and AI for Leaders, a required first-year course. But AI integration has since spread across hallmark classes in marketing, entrepreneurship, and organizational behavior, reshaping how students prepare for and participate in case discussions.
“We have a lot of live AI case exercises we’ve built and deployed in class,” said HBS professor Mitchell B. Weiss, describing “AI-based simulations, AI-based avatars, a sort of AI-based building” now used in the classroom.
Master’s in business administration students have access to a broad suite of AI platforms, including ChatGPT, Harvard AI Sandbox, Claude, Claude Code, Lovable, Julius AI, Manus, and Gamma, according to HBS professor Iavor I. Bojinov.
The technology has changed the dynamics of case discussions. HBS professor Todd Lensman said students now arrive with a higher baseline understanding of case material, citing AI tools available outside the classroom.
“We come into the classroom understanding that that is, in some sense, a higher baseline or a different baseline than you might have expected in the past, that students come in with,” Lensman said.
Weiss said that dynamic plays to the case method’s strengths, arguing that while AI excels at information transfer and written assignments, live questioning remains important to teaching.
“If what you were doing before — which is what we were doing — which is asking deep and proper questions live, then this teaching method is actually very suitable for these days,” Weiss said.
HBS professor Rembrand M. Koning said the higher baseline knowledge students gain from AI and bring to the classroom has sharpened discussion.
“It just heightens our ability to have really rich discussions and sort of get to the core business ideas that we love talking about here at HBS,” he said.
Koning also described efforts to use AI in class preparation itself as a way to push students deeper into the material before they arrive.
“One of the things that we started to explore, like, what are ways we can use AI in the process of preparation for class, so that students aren’t using it to just cheat, right, or just to summarize or not read but to engage more deeply with the material,” he said.
“There’s a lot of faculty who are really excited,” Koning added.
But he cautioned against an all-AI curriculum.
“Let’s make sure we keep some history classes, right? And other things where there’s no AI, we’re going to do it old school. I think both really work well together,” he said.
The required course on AI at HBS has also evolved. Bojinov said that after ChatGPT’s release reshaped the field, the course was restructured into three modules covering AI’s transformation of workplace tasks, AI-enabled business models, and questions of AI safety and sovereignty.
“ChatGPT came out, and it really started to show us how this is leading to fundamentally new business and operating models,” Bojinov said.
HBS Dean Srikant M. Datar framed the broader curricular shift as preparation for a business landscape reshaped by digital transformation in a February video posted on the school’s Facebook account.
“Leaders will both need to understand how to use AI, how to scale AI, how to govern AI, but also how to think about issues like privacy, how do you think about issues of security,” he said.
HBS has a history of early adoption. In fall 2023, the school provided all MBA students with access to the latest version of ChatGPT — a move Weiss said no other leading business school took at the time. He also drew a parallel to 1984, when HBS was among the first business schools to require every incoming student to own a personal computer.
“It was very parallel to something that happened in the ’80s, when the PC showed up,” Weiss said. “We were the, I think, only leading business school to require the Ivy student to have a personal computer in 1984.”
Koning said AI proficiency is no longer optional for MBA candidates entering the job market.
“Right now, if you want to get a job out of the MBA program, you need to know how to use these AI tools, because they’re already part of the interview process at all the big tech companies, increasingly consulting, even in private equity,” he said.
Still, faculty said the most important skill the expanded curriculum aims to develop is judgement. Weiss, in particular, called it “our most highest important task” at HBS.
“Our mission remains to educate leaders who make a difference in the world,” he added. “Educating leaders who can continue to do that, even in and especially in a changing and evolving world.”
—Staff writer Siena G. Devine Guzmán can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @sienadevinee.
—Staff writer Katharine E. Chavez can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @KatharineEC7.