On May 27, 2026, Harvard Business School announced its 2026–2027 academic year initiatives, turning the spotlight once again onto how elite institutions shape global leadership. But while the school prepares its next cohort, policy experts are questioning why the public sector has failed to replicate its famous educational playbook.
On the podcast The Rest Is Money, economist Mariana Mazzucato highlighted the school's signature pedagogy to point out a massive disparity in how we train public versus private leaders. Mazzucato pointed directly to Harvard Business School's case study methodology as a prime example of institutionalized learning, asking, "Why do they have all these case studies on global firms, you know, around the world? Because we value business, which we should."
The issue, according to Mariana Mazzucato, is not that Harvard Business School is overvalued, but that public institutions fail to build similar structures to learn from their own successes and failures. While global firms are meticulously analyzed, she argued that we "just roll our eyes at bureaucracies" instead of creating frameworks to share learnings between cities and public departments.
As Harvard Business School prepares to launch its 2026–2027 programs, the debate highlights a growing push for public sector reform. The challenge going forward is whether public policy schools can successfully adapt the case-study model to build effective, valued public institutions.