Harvard May No Longer Be Business as Usual : Education: Faculty unveils new curriculum that emphasizes teamwork and problem solving in lieu of case studies.

Trying to practice some of what it preaches, the Harvard Business School on Monday unveiled a series of proposals to overhaul its legendary MBA program and make it more relevant to today’s business world.

The proposed changes, which emerged from an 18-month curriculum review carried out by more than 100 faculty members, include a complete revamping of first-year courses to emphasize teamwork and problem solving and a reduced emphasis on the school’s famed case-study teaching method.

Students and faculty will spend several months debating the proposals before a final faculty vote.

“We think there will be an increased need for both individual leadership and teamwork among senior managers in the future, and we want to anticipate those needs,” said Walter Salmon, an associate dean of the school.

The recommendations do not call for the establishment of a one-year master’s in business administration program, as some had anticipated. And in many respects, Harvard is jumping on a bandwagon that is already rolling: A number of major business schools have overhauled their curricula in recent years.

But Harvard has enormous prestige and many powerful alumni in the business world, and its reforms are thus likely to legitimize the pioneering efforts of some smaller schools and encourage others to move in a similar direction.

At the core of Harvard’s proposed changes is a plan to scrap the existing first-year MBA courses--mostly specialized classes focusing on particular business skills--and replace them with integrated, yearlong courses with such titles as “Leading People and Organizations” and “Managing Products and Services.”

There would be less focus on case studies--fictional representations of real-life business situations--which many believe are too narrow to use in teaching about certain issues. And there would be a much greater emphasis on teamwork among students and understanding of international issues. The semester system would be replaced with trimesters to allow students to take more courses.

While Harvard does not need to worry about declining enrollment or the financial problems that threaten some business schools, it apparently chose to respond to broad concerns among business people and prospective students that MBA programs are both overpriced and unresponsive to the demands of today’s global businesses.

George Daly, dean of the Stern School of Business at New York University, said Harvard’s changes are in line with what many other schools have done in recent years.

“It’s hardly dramatic or new,” he said.

In an effort to attract a more diverse student body, Harvard would also change its admission policies to accept some students who do not have substantial work experience.

The toughest of all the faculty recommendations may be one calling for the school to remain flexible and adaptable to change in the future.

“We have to change the way we change,” said Prof. Len Schlesinger, chairman of the commission that recommended the overhaul.

That’s the kind of advice business school graduates routinely give to corporations--but the corporations, staffed though they may be with business school graduates, often have a hard time acting on it.

Associated Press and Bloomberg Business News contributed to this report.