In an effort to maintain its position on the cutting edge of international business, the Wharton School will collaborate with Dubai World to train the Middle East's brightest young executive minds.
The Dubai Leaders Program will bring 135 of Dubai World's youngest talents to Penn, where the businessmen will learn managerial skills they can then take back to their country.
What the program "would like to do is give them the wisdom of an MBA and the experience of being a seasoned manager," said Finance professor Bulent Gultekin. "The initiative will expose them to programs and give them exposure to global scenarios similar to Dubai's, like Singapore and Hong Kong."
The 12-month program will allow the Dubai World representatives to be immersed in three separate learning environments -- Penn, Dubai and Singapore -- in order to further study the changing state of international business.
Dubai World is a government-controlled holding company that owns DP World, the company which ignited a firestorm of controversy earlier this year when an acquisition would have given it control of several key American sea ports, including Philadelphia.
The resulting controversy forced DP World to divest itself from its American holdings.
The duration and varied locations of the course make the program one of the more intensive and sophisticated collaborations within Wharton, though it's conceptually similar to many other custom-made projects created by the Wharton Executive Education program.
Over half of the executive education programs consist of customized curricula tailored for a specific group, and every year, nearly 8,000 executives pass through Wharton's doors.
"After Dubai World and Wharton agreed to collaborate, we assigned executives to go over to Dubai for four or five weeks," explains Jonathan Spector, head of the executive education programs. "During that process analysis, we identified the outlines of the program and Dubai World agreed that we should do it."
By spending nearly a month in Dubai examining the particularities of Dubai World's corporate structure, the Wharton executive education program was able to design a curriculum that would suit the needs of Dubai's next generation of managers.
The economic landscape of Dubai differs greatly from those of other countries in the region or around the world, and these differences are what attracted the executive education program to collaborate with Dubai World.
Dubai is one of seven emirates that constitute the United Arab Emirates, but unlike other Middle Eastern countries, UAE and particularly Dubai don't have that much oil.
In fact, only 5 percent of the country's gross domestic product comes from oil revenues. The rest is from commerce and tourism.
"Dubai took a gamble 20 or 30 years ago, borrowed money from Kuwait, and built an airport that could serve as a hub between Europe and the Far East," Gultekin explained. "The gamble paid off, and now Dubai is building a service-oriented economy with visionary leadership."
Now, in the 21st century, only 10 percent of the population are from Dubai and the rapid pace of development outstrips the country's managerial population.
"The executives filling the ranks of corporations like Dubai World are younger and less experienced than their counterparts around the world," said Spector.
Wharton identified the need for executives with training in finance, management, marketing and leadership and agreed to host the incoming class of Dubai World managers.
Learning with Wharton should provide its own set of challenges to the executives from Dubai's corporate world.
"Working in executive education gives managers an opportunity to stand back and look at the overall business strategy or landscape," said Marketing professor George Day, a member of the executive education faculty.
As for this particular program, Day added, "We want to be a global school. We can't be global if we limit ourselves to Philadelphia."
