Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/62913
from the editors Global, Connected, Committed T he Guinea worm is a parasite that can live inside a host for years and cause painful, debilitating illness. The bad news is that there's no cure. The good news is that the World Health Organization, the World Bank, various governments, 13 pharmaceuti- cal companies, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have banded together to try to eliminate Guinea worm and nine other tropical diseases. The Gates Foundation, in fact, has just pledged US$363 million toward the London Declaration on Neglected Diseases. That was the CNN headline, of course—$363 million!—on top of $750 million the foun- dation recently pledged to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. But the story became even more compelling when I took a closer look at the drug companies that also have committed to the cause: AstraZeneca of the U.K, Eisai Co. of Japan, Novartis of Switzerland, Johnson & Johnson of the U.S., and Sanofi of France. The other participants— Abbott, Bayer HealthCare AG, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Gilead, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, MSD, and Pfizer—are equally diverse and multinational. Now, I'm not saying companies are motivated by sheer altruism. There's tremendous economic opportunity at the base of the pyramid, where millions of people make mil- lions of small purchases. There's also inventive opportunity in emerging markets, as Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble point out in their new book Reverse Innovation, reviewed in this issue. Govindarajan and Trim- ble note that products created for the needs of developing nations often can be reformatted and released in Western countries, bringing in profits in both markets. But I am saying that the real headline of this story is that billion-dollar competitors from an assortment of developed nations have pooled their resources and expertise to address some of the world's wickedest problems in some of the world's poorest nations. And I'm thinking that description sounds really familiar. Because today's business schools are training their stu- dents to thrive in just such situations—on globally distributed teams working in emerging economies with the goal of turning business into a force for good. In this issue, we examine the globalization of business education from just that perspective as we investigate the benefits that accrue—on all sides—when schools from developed and developing nations partner on business education. We check in with Iraqi schools seeking accreditation, Western schools launching partnerships in China and Latin America, and asso- ciations facilitating networking opportunities among universities around the globe. I find myself wondering if any of the schools featured in this issue might have enrolled the next Bill Gates. Not just the visionary tech entrepreneur, but also the pas- sionate philanthropist who collaborates across nations on humanitarian causes. Busi- ness schools could be training that someone right now. 6 May/June 2012 BizEd RAQUITA HENDERSON PERSPECTIVES/GLOW IMAGES