Who said Harvard MBAs don’t code?
Last spring, we published a Harbus piece asserting that “coding is the new business literacy.” As we look back on the student-led digital literacy movements at HBS over the past year, we’d say that the student body agrees. There’s a blossoming ecosystem on campus of tech-driven clubs, hackathons, and ventures. It’s hard to believe that in 2015, HBS lacked even a computer science club.
Fast forward to 2017, and CODE is one of the largest, most active organizations at HBS. Many other new clubs have also come to life and become technical beacons on campus. Business Analytics & (big) Data Club (BAD) regularly hosts popular SQL 101 and data science workshops. Bitcoin Club is teaching MBAs about the technicalities of blockchain. Harvard AR/VR Student Alliance connects Harvard students, staff, and faculty interested in exploring the frontiers of augmented and virtual reality. All of these clubs are united in the strong belief that learning happens by building — not by lecturing.
This article is the first in a Harbus series highlighting technical clubs on the HBS campus. Today, we’re going to dive into CODE’s members and vision for the future.
CODE was founded in the fall of 2015 by a group of RCs who wanted to bring technologists together at Harvard Business School. Some of us were former engineers who wanted to keep the toolkits sharp during their time at HBS, while others were enthusiasts who wanted to learn the basics and how to better communicate with engineers. We believed then, as we still do, that HBS needed a place where engineers could meet to discuss technical topics and the student body as a whole could come to gain that first toe-hold into the richness, and modern necessity, that is coding skills.
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