A Bulgarian professor speaking to an audience of some 70 nationalities on the operations of a company in Argentina may sound like an international summit meeting at Davos, but it is in fact a window into one of the many lively class discussions for MBA students at Insead Business School.
'Insead is like the UN of business schools. Diversity has been important to us. The school was founded with this in mind and it continues to live this spirit well,' said Jake Cohen, Insead's dean of MBA.
Diversity may have been long coveted by business schools, but efforts to drive international recruitment have intensified in recent years as school administrators and prospective candidates increasingly understand the crucial role that diversity plays in an ever-complex, interdependent and fast-moving world.
'Driven by globalisation and economic integration, executives are no longer just solving problems in their own backyards, but are managing across borders,' said Edward Buckingham, associate director of Insead executive MBA programmes.
The financial crisis is a case in point of how this interdependency is playing out.
'What, for example, does the credit crunch mean for someone sitting in Thailand versus Britain? A diverse classroom helps people get a cross-cultural perspective and understand different viewpoints,' said Neil Logan, director of international business at University of Reading's Henley Business School.