Just in case “global” isn’t an adjective you readily ascribe to HBS, consider this. Nearly 30 percent of the School’s more than 78,000 alumni live abroad, scattered across 167 countries. That means there’s almost no nation you can visit that isn’t home to at least one HBS graduate.

But alumni diversity is only part of the School’s global story. Faculty members today are as international as the country flags hanging in first-year classrooms. As for MBA students, the Class of 2013 reflects the School’s global ambition: 34 percent were born abroad, representing 68 countries.

Behind these impressive numbers is the story of the School’s nearly 20-year-long journey to answer a profoundly important question: How does HBS ensure that its students, when they graduate, are equipped to operate in a global world? Just how the School has risen to that challenge is the subject of this issue’s focus topic: the global manager.

Our lead story recounts how HBS developed a unique research and teaching approach to address the rise of globalization. Since the mid-1990s, the School has established a network of seven far-flung research centers to facilitate the creation of the intellectual capital needed to bring global perspectives to classroom discussions. Today, over half of all HBS cases have an international focus.

Raising the bar on its global mission, HBS this year required the first-year class to travel abroad to work on a product or service idea for one of 140 business partners in developing markets. “We had to put students in situations where they’re able to practice the ideas and concepts that we teach in the classroom,” says Professor Youngme Moon, senior associate dean and chair of the MBA Program. While other business schools offer field-based learning, none deliver it on the scale and scope of HBS.

To round out our global package, we profile three alumni who have had considerable success applying their MBA skills to cross-border business opportunities.

Pictured on our cover, Mark Fields (MBA 1989) has worked for Ford Motor Company in South America, Japan, and Europe, and now serves as president of the automaker’s Americas division. In a bold move for the time, Jack Perkowski (MBA 1973) abandoned his Wall Street career in the early 1990s and headed to China, where he built a major auto parts manufacturing business and has now launched an investment bank. Sunil Mittal (OPM 27, 1999) founded India’s largest telecom company, which has recently expanded into 17 African countries.

This dynamic trio of Jack Perkowski (MBA 1973), Sunil Bharti Mittal (OPM 27, 1999), and Mark Fields (MBA 1989) exemplifies the challenges and rewards that lie ahead for business leaders in a global century. For its part, HBS intends to provide today’s MBA students with experiences on campus and off that, in Dean Nitin Nohria’s view, “are un-matched in global breadth of analysis and understanding.”

— Roger Thompson

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