Ranked #1 in the World
Just arrived to Macau (my first visit) to participate in the Thunderbird Global Council Asian meeting and the Thunderbird Alumni Global Reunion. Not exactly what I had imagined as an old Portuguese colony!
One of the themes that keeps coming up, as we work on the new strategic framework for the School, is the idea that Thunderbird ought to further focus in on preparing students to be successful in emerging economies, to help bring about opportunities to the hundreds of millions still left out.
An idea is receiving growing support to require that all MBA students be required (or be given the opportunity) to personally engage in supervised consulting projects in emerging economies.
Borrowing from the UN Global Compact, I’m beginning to think that we ought to include in our mission the notion of building an “inclusive” (not only “sustainable”) global economy.
Here’s what the new mission statement could look like:
We educate global leaders who create sustainable and inclusive prosperity worldwide
or
We educate global leaders who contribute to an inclusive and sustainable global economy
November 6th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
While I personally like the concept of adding inclusiveness to sustainability as guiding principles, I would urge caution on this move. Sustainability is now an accepted need impacting most business. However, I fear adding inclusiveness at this time might be misconstrued to mean some Utopian principle. Being Global should already be inclusive.
In addition, Thunderbird was the first to espouse the oath of ethics in business education. Inclusiveness is also part of ethics.