As this year ends, I want to thank our staff, our members and our many supporters for all they have done to share across continents their experience of business education. 

Each time I visit member schools – most recently Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, and meet professors, university administrators and students, including Africa Clubs, Net Impact and other student organizations, I am thrilled to sense huge enthusiasm, and knowledge flowing in all directions. In Europe and the US, they are eager to learn from developing countries how management skills can help foster development; their colleagues in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East are looking for best practice in research, pedagogy and the management of business schools themselves; and a rich exchange of knowledge occurs among “Northern” schools – for example how best to run student internships and consultant assignments in developing countries, and among “Southern” schools, which share severe resource constraints. I am also very pleased to see how many member school faculty are engaged in GBSN capacity-building programs in Africa, Pakistan and elsewhere. Above all, I see GBSN as a catalyst. What we can do ourselves is necessarily limited. What business school faculty, students and administrators do on their own, sometimes inspired by GBSN, can vastly expand our own reach.

I am also gratified to see that after many years, an increasing number of large official development cooperation projects include substantial management capacity-building and management training components. This is the case for a new crop of global health programs. I am in no doubt at all that the inclusion of management education will not only save taxpayers a great deal of money but actually save lives.

On this note, I am looking forward to working with you next year and wish all of our friends the very best.

From everyone at GBSN, we wish you Happy Holidays and a joyous New Year!