In March and April, I got the opportunity to participate in two Global MBA conferences, which were held in Sydney and Paris, respectively.
The first conference, MBA World Summit, selected 100 top inspiring MBA students from business schools around the world for a three-day summit. The summit was a platform for high impact exchange among MBA students and was aimed at pushing future innovation and fostering a collaborative culture.
The opening session on ‘Future of Work’ gave us a good overview of how industries and countries would evolve in the coming years.
As the world is going through the fourth Industrial Revolution in which data, robotics, artificial intelligence, etc. are shaping the way things are made, serviced and distributed, the session urged us to think about how this renaissance can disrupt countries and economies and can create a wealth distribution that might disturb global peace and relations.
We learned that developing countries need to be investing in new jobs, new skills and new industries to stay relevant. Later, we had several laboratory sessions that gave me an idea of what MBA students from different backgrounds are interested in and are working on.
The second conference, the Graduate Business Conference (GBC), held in Paris, brought together student leaders from Top B-Schools around the world to share their best practices and ideas. This year, the 36th GBC was hosted by ESCP Europe in its Paris campus and the theme was ‘United in Diversity’. Around 120 participants attended the summit. These included current Student Presidents, Head of Student Councils and Alumni.
The dialogues revolved around the common problems that student leaders face and how they can run student bodies better. In addition to dialogues and sharing of best practices, the conference also hosted speaker sessions and panel discussions. It was surprising yet enjoyable to see how students in the top B-schools all faced similar experiences and problems.
From both these conferences, it was exciting to observe that though we were from different countries, the topics and interests that we all had were very similar. It was a great platform to form networks with peers from other top schools, and this becomes important as we all move towards a more globalised world.
– Sandeep Ganesh, Class of 2019