Harvard & Tata Agree On An $8.4 Million Deal

The Harvard Business School executive education building resulted from a Tata gift of $50 million. Ethan Baron photo

The ongoing relationship between Harvard Business School and India’s Tata group of companies just got more serious. Harvard University today (Aug. 30) said it had established an unusual six-year, $8.4 million research alliance with a group of Tata companies including Tata Sons, Tata Communications, Tata Steel, and Jaguar Land Rover. Building on close connections between Harvard’s engineering and business schools, the first-of-its-kind initiative adds a new leadership-development component to the university’s research partnerships.

Six years ago, Tata Group and its philanthropic interests pledged a $50 million gift to Harvard Business School, the largest donation HBS has ever received from an international donor. That money helped to fund a new academic and residential building for participants in the school’s executive education programs.

This latest agreement is meant “to accelerate the development of novel technologies and create a future generation of entrepreneurial leaders,” Harvard announced. The deal establishes a Tata Fellowship Program at Harvard Business School. For each research project funded under the alliance, an experienced Tata employee will spend up to a year in residency at Harvard in the HBS Executive Education Program.

SUPPORTING CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH & PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Nominated by the Tata senior leadership and subject to Executive Education admissions standards, Tata Fellows will benefit from the insight and guidance of an assigned HBS faculty mentor and gain the educational foundation to foster “intrapreneurship” within the Tata companies. The school said they will also each collaborate with a Harvard research team to develop a commercialization plan for technologies that may arise from the funded projects.

The initial focus of the research alliance will be on robotics, wearable technologies, and the “Internet of things” (IoT), tapping into recent strides in the field of advanced materials. Over time, the scope could broaden to encompass new research areas of mutual interest. The arrangement with Tata is expected to stimulate a global exchange of ideas.

“Non-U.S. executives account for close to two-thirds of the senior business leaders in our open-enrollment programs held in our classrooms in Boston, Shanghai, and Mumbai,” said Das Narayandas, senior associate dean for HBS external relations and publishing, in a statement. “Harvard Business School faculty routinely develop and lead custom programs for marquee global clients around the world, introducing business leaders to the newest innovations and research in the areas of strategic thinking, change management, and leadership, among others.”

FUNDED PROJECTS YET TO BE SELECTED

Gopichand Katragadda, group chief technology officer for Tata Sons, added in a statement, “We are excited about forming this research collaboration between Tata and Harvard that will uniquely encompass engineering, management, and other disciplines to produce market outcomes. The Tata Group companies have pioneered products and services in diverse areas, including materials, automotive, telecommunications, and information technology. The Tata Fellows will bring deep market understanding in these areas for successful deployment of the advanced research at Harvard.”

The funded projects, which have yet to be selected, will advance scientific research in labs across the university, including at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard Medical School, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. A joint steering committee will guide the overall direction of the research alliance and approve funding for the proposed projects.

“In many ways this exciting alliance foreshadows the type of close interactions we anticipate between HBS, Harvard Paulson School, and our corporate partners as the much-anticipated Science and Engineering Complex and the enterprise research campus take shape in Allston,” said Isaac T. Kohlberg, Harvard’s senior associate provost and chief technology development officer. “We’re glad to be expanding Harvard’s range of corporate partnerships and eager to welcome the Tata Fellows into the thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem of Cambridge and Boston.”

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