Foreword

The 50th anniversary of the MIT Sloan School of Management offers an auspicious moment to look to the past with pride and to the future with boldness and confidence. It also is a moment to celebrate the deep and important synergies of the Sloan School and the other elements that comprise MIT.

The beginning of management education at MIT predates 1952, when the Sloan School opened its doors as the School of Industrial Management. Its roots reach much further back in time. MIT's first curriculum in 1865 included subjects that today's MBAs would find familiar—economics and statistics, principles of industrial development, business law, taxation, and banking.

As the industrial world developed in the early 1900s, the concept of providing business training in the academic environment gained popularity. So did the demand for these courses, prompting MIT to create Course XV—Engineering Administration—in 1914. For the next three decades, the relevance and demand for programs in management only continued to grow. And in 1952, the MIT Sloan School was born.

The concept of the school was the idea of MIT alumnus and innovator Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., Class of 1895—the man credited with the invention of the modern corporation. Mr. Sloan sought to solve the complex problems of modern industry through the sort of rigorous research that MIT has always been about, and his generosity made it possible for MIT to create the new school.

For MIT, with its long history of working on practical problems affecting society and the economy, this progression was natural.

The MIT Sloan School was shaped by bringing MIT's quantitative approach to the management of organizations, and through the strong traditions of innovation that have been the hallmark of MIT.

Today, innovation—both technological and organizational—creates new pathways to serve society and drives the strength of businesses and, indeed, entire economies. Contemporary industry is fast-paced, knowledge-based, global, electronically interconnected, and often created by entrepreneurs. It thrives on innovation. So does the Sloan School.

MIT is blessed with an intellectual environment of remarkable creativity, generated by the synergy among world-class programs in science, engineering, and management, together with extraordinary programs in the arts, humanities, architecture, and the social sciences. The Sloan School leverages these strong collaborative links across the Institute to prepare the next generation of engineers, scientists, and innovative, technology-savvy managers to shape the world around us.

This has created an ideal educational setting, not just for the last half century, but for the next 50 years and beyond.

I cannot imagine MIT without its Sloan School, and I cannot imagine the Sloan School without MIT. It is a comparative advantage, and competitive advantage for all of us.

Charles M. Vest, President
Massachusetts Institute of Technology