Harvard Business School Program for Management Development

You should identify a senior executive within your company to serve as your company sponsor. This individual should be named on your application. As your sponsor, he or she is involved in your learning and development, and will ensure that you are free from your official duties during the program.

In addition, five programs require that your sponsor complete a Sponsoring Statement as part of the application process. These programs are the Advanced Management Program, the General Management Program, the Program for Leadership Development, the High Potentials Leadership Program, and Leading with Impact. This Sponsoring Statement provides the Admissions Committee with a better understanding of your background, roles, and potential as a leader. Upon receipt of your application for one of these programs, the Admissions Committee will email your company sponsor a link to a Sponsoring Statement form. This Sponsoring Statement must be completed before the committee will review your application.

Participants can expect a carefully integrated mix of lectures, presentations, business simulations, small group discussions, and the hallmark HBS case study method.

Pioneered by HBS, the case method is employed as the best tool to teach general management and leadership. Case studies offer multiple levels of learning, compelling participants to identify relevant issues and to apply practical business lessons to their own situations and companies. Executive Education participants benefit from an added dimension no other business school can offer: the opportunity to be taught by many of the faculty who wrote the cases and have personal knowledge of the problems and solutions presented.