Business school to train leaders how to do good
ONE of the world’s top business schools in London said on Wednesday that it will set up an institute to tackle challenges facing poor countries, the first of its kind to do so.
The London Business School said the founders of the Lonely Planet travel guides had donated £10 million to create the Wheeler Institute of Business and Development.
“We can and should harness the power of business for a bigger purpose,” François Ortalo-Magne, the London Business School’s dean, said in a statement.
“We can train this generation differently, so that they emerge as more inclusive, more courageous leaders for good.”
The post-graduate school, which is consistently ranked in the global top 10, said business research and innovation could solve social issues ranging from healthcare delivery to poverty alleviation and gender equality.
The couple started the Lonely Planet travel guides in 1973 after driving a minivan through Asia’s hippie backpacker trail from London to Australia.
After selling the Lonely Planet enterprise for $133 million in 2007, the couple set up the Planet Wheeler Foundation, which funds more than 50 projects in Africa and Asia.
The London Business School, founded in 1964, has more than 40,000 alumni from some 150 countries, including Britain’s Brexit minister David Davis and Maria Kiwanuka, senior advisor to Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni.
In addition to teaching students, the institute will work on ways to turn research into action that creates change in developing countries.