Since its founding in 1996, the Saïd Business School has been purposefully global. Our activities are driven by our mission - to have a positive impact on the world through tackling issues that cross borders, cultures, and business practice. We seek to learn lessons from all over the globe as we educate and equip our students and participants with the skills they need to make a responsible impact and be part of the solution to global issues. The Oxford Saïd research community provides the fresh ideas, novel perspectives and intellectual power to enable the School and its students to have an impact that changes not only business practice but the public policies that govern them.
We are a highly international School. We recruit students from across the world and ensure that no country, culture, or perspective dominates, meaning our students must challenge their individual perspectives through exposure to different cultures, viewpoints, and practices. This is best, but not exclusively, demonstrated by our MBA class, annually drawn from 50-60 countries including South Asia, North America, Oceania, the Middle East, Latin America and Europe. We have committed to investing in talent from Africa, ensuring that at least 10% of our MBA class come from this rapidly developing continent.
Our curriculum emphasises the important and positive role that business must play, alongside other sectors, in advancing broad societal agendas including the Sustainable Development Goals. For example, the Global Opportunities and Threats Oxford core course enables students to understand systems level thinking, coming together to identify business opportunities and generate solutions to challenges arising from high impact global trends.
A vast number of co-curricular activities, such as those offered by the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship, support this agenda. Our Open and Customised Executive Education programmes transform individuals, teams, organisations, and systems around the globe.
Our alumni apply what they have learnt here in their careers. Amongst the ways in which they are contributing to local and global communities are: providing access to travel accommodation for people with mobility issues, improving public health outcomes in rural Bangladesh through ICT; and developing a network of business accelerators and loan funds in Rwanda and Tanzania to create jobs through small business development as well as working with refugee entrepreneurs.
