Kim Clark Means Business Now

Kim B. Clark vividly remembers arriving at Harvard College as a freshman in late summer of 1967. To earn his financial-aid benefits, he spent his first two weeks cleaning undergrad dormitories and stumbled through the rest of his first year overwhelmed by the school's demands. "I was clueless," he says. "You could not have found someone who was less prepared to come here than me."

Lucky thing he eventually stuck it out. Nearly three decades later, Clark is preparing for yet another cleanup role--this time as the new dean of Harvard's business school. On Sept. 11, the university named the soft-spoken professor of technology and operations as successor to John H. McArthur, who had held the post for 15 years.