The advice emerging business schools typically receive amounts to becoming a smaller, slower, poorer version of INSEAD or London Business School: Build faculty research capacity, develop international networks, pursue global accreditations, and invest in physical infrastructure. In short: Replicate what established schools spent decades building and leverage internationalization and accreditation to drive connectivity with them.

This advice has always been problematic, but it is now becoming dangerous. While emerging schools scramble to catch up to yesterday’s model, that model is collapsing. Artificial intelligence is fundamentally disrupting the value proposition of campus-based business education. The knowledge transmission that once justified bringing students to physical campuses can now occur asynchronously, be personalized, and be delivered at near-zero marginal cost. Meanwhile, established schools are trapped by expensive physical footprints, brand promises built on exclusivity, faculty governance structures resistant to change, and accreditation requirements designed for yesterday’s educational model.

This creates an extraordinary opportunity. Emerging business schools should not play catch-up but aim to leapfrog, i.e., to bypass the constraints of traditional models and build what business education will need in the future.

The Mobile Phone Moment in Business Education

The term ‘leapfrogging’ originates in development economics and refers to the process by which developing countries bypass landline infrastructure by adopting mobile phones directly. They did not build slower, cheaper versions of copper wire networks. They recognized that the constraints that forced them to skip a stage were, in fact, advantages: they were not locked into legacy infrastructure. The same applies to payment networks and retail markets in developing and transition economies.

Business education is at a similar inflection point. The question is not how to mimic established schools, but how to chart a distinct path forward. The question is what new infrastructure enables learning that legacy systems cannot.

Consider what established schools cannot easily do:

• They cannot radically reconfigure their physical campuses because those buildings represent legacy assets and institutional identity. They are constrained to hosting on-campus lectures, even as AI renders traditional content delivery redundant.
• They cannot readily experiment with competency-based credentials or stackable microdegrees because their brands depend on the integrity of traditional degree structures, and their accreditation is tied to credit hours and seat time.
• They cannot deeply integrate an employer-designed curriculum that updates continuously, because faculty governance structures and the research-teaching model create institutional inertia.
• They cannot scale access without diluting their exclusive brands. A school that prides itself on high selectivity cannot suddenly serve thousands more students without undermining its core value proposition.

These are not just temporary obstacles. They are fundamental features of the incumbent model. They create opportunities for schools willing to build differently.

What AI Disruption Actually Means for Physical Campuses

The disruption is not about AI replacing faculty. Rather, AI fundamentally changes what justifies bringing students to a physical location. If content delivery, assignment feedback, and even tutoring can happen via AI, what is left?

The answer: All the things AI cannot do: Building relationships based on trust, navigating ambiguous human dynamics with high stakes, learning through messy, collaborative problem-solving with diverse peers, and developing professional identity through role models and mentorship. This requires a rethinking of physical space and the pedagogical model. Established schools know this, but they are trapped by existing infrastructure and stakeholder expectations. A school with a EUR 50 million lecture hall complex cannot easily admit that lecture halls are obsolete.

Emerging schools face no such constraint. They can design from first principles: What if students arrive with AI-enabled content mastery? What could campus-based learning focus on exclusively? The answer might look like intensive, project-based modules in which students work with real organizations on real problems, punctuated by reflective practice sessions and relationship-building intensives. Content delivery happens remotely via AI-enhanced learning paths. Physical presence is reserved for activities that require human connection. This is not a cheaper version of traditional education. It is a different product, potentially more valuable because it focuses resources on what actually matters in the AI age.

Three Principles for Leapfrogging

If emerging business schools should not try to replicate established schools, what should they do instead? Three principles can guide truly transformative strategies, with internationalization reconceived as a key enabler:

1. Be a Platform, Not an Institution

Traditional internationalization means hiring international faculty, recruiting international students, and establishing exchange agreements. This treats the school as a container that must own international capability. The platform approach asks: How can we orchestrate global talent and knowledge without owning it all? Think Airbnb versus Hilton. You do not need to own rooms if you can curate the network. This means:

• Move toward a network-based faculty model in which global experts contribute intensively to specific modules rather than holding permanent positions: A Silicon Valley entrepreneur is teaching a two-week startup intensive. A supply chain executive designing a sustainability project. This provides students with learning led by cutting-edge practitioners, an experience most traditional schools cannot offer.
• Building curricula through distributed expertise: Rather than replicating a full accounting faculty, partner with a specialized accounting firm’s training academy for technical content delivery, while your faculty focuses on application, integration, and judgment.
• Facilitating global learning networks among peers: Your students working on live projects with students from partner schools in different regions, creating authentic collaboration across cultures rather than superficial exchange programs.

The competitive advantage is not your institution’s depth. What matters is the breadth of your platform.

2. Form Capability Partnerships, Not Prestige Partnerships

Traditional internationalization chases partnerships with prestigious schools, resulting in ceremonial MOUs with minimal operational substance. Both sides claim global reach while actual collaboration remains superficial. Capability partnerships are different: You partner with organizations that have specific capabilities you need, and you offer capabilities they lack. The partnership is operationally deep because both parties gain something concrete. Here are some examples:

• Partner with a learning platform company powered by AI to develop adaptive modules (digital modules with real-time customization). They get a testing ground for their technology and content insights from your faculty; you get a sophisticated learning infrastructure you could not build alone.
• Create programs in collaboration with multinational companies operating in your region. They need talent pipelines and contextual expertise you can provide; you get curriculum relevance and placement outcomes that traditional schools struggle to match.
• Establish research mentorship networks with specialized institutes or think tanks globally. They get access to energetic junior researchers; you get publications and methodological expertise that would take years to develop internally.
• Form assessment validation partnerships with professional services firms. They get research insights and access to emerging talent; you get credibility for student outcomes beyond traditional academic metrics.

These partnerships deliver immediate operational value while building international networks. They are the opposite of signing MOUs with famous schools that go nowhere.

3. Run Experimental Laboratories that Established Players Cannot

Your constraints are actually your freedom. Established schools have stakeholders who expect consistency, accreditation requirements that limit flexibility, and brands that depend on maintaining traditional markers of quality. They are aware of the need to evolve but struggle to experiment meaningfully.

You can be the laboratory for what business education will eventually become…

• Provide test architectures for competency-based, stackable credentials: What if students assembled learning from multiple sources (your intensive modules, corporate training programs, and online courses) and you validated and certified the integrated capability? This is impossible for schools whose business model depends on traditional degrees in highly regulated environments (e.g., the EU).
• Experiment with AI-enhanced pedagogy without fear of diluting your brand: You can openly test how AI tutoring, AI-generated case analysis, and AI writing coaches enhance learning, because you are not protecting a premium brand built on traditional academic status markers.
• Pioneer credentials designed for an industry that updates continuously: Partner with sector councils to develop programs in which the curriculum evolves in response to real-time employer needs. Traditional schools cannot do this because their curriculum approval processes take years, and faculty control content.
• Develop quality metrics based on outcomes beyond traditional accreditation: Track graduate impact through employer assessments, career progression, contributions to organizational outcomes, and, most importantly, predictive analytics to demonstrate forward-looking ROI. Show that your graduates deliver value even though you do not match traditional input metrics like faculty PhD ratios or research output.

The goal is not just to survive resource constraints. This demonstrates that your model delivers better outcomes precisely because it is unconstrained by legacy systems.

What Leapfrogging Does NOT Look Like

It is worth being explicit about what not to do:

• Creating an international office to count exchange agreements and track mobility numbers. This is the administration of traditional internationalization, not leapfrogging it.
• Hiring expensive international faculty as trophy appointments to signal prestige. If they are not deeply integrated into platform building or capability partnerships, they are just expensive signals.
• Copying the course catalog of a top-ranked school. This guarantees that you will always be a step behind, teaching what was relevant when those courses were designed.
• Pursuing international accreditation by mimicking the faculty research models of incumbent schools. If accreditation requires approaches that do not serve your students or stakeholders, the accreditation itself may be obsolete.
• Building physical infrastructure to match traditional schools. The question is not how we can afford a campus like theirs. It is what a learning space looks like when content delivery is handled by AI.

Leapfrogging means not playing their game. It entails building for a future they cannot readily attain.

The Choice

We are at an inflection point in business education. Established schools built for the 20th century are struggling to adapt to the 21st century, disrupted by AI. They know change is necessary, but are constrained by infrastructure, governance, brand promises, and accreditation requirements designed for yesterday’s model.

Emerging business schools, particularly those in structurally weaker or less resourced environments, face a fundamental choice: Spend the next decade trying to build what INSEAD or London Business School built over the last century, or spend it building what business education needs for the next century. The leapfrogging opportunity is not about catching up. It is about arriving at a different, more relevant place. It is about building schools that serve their communities while connecting globally, that leverage technology without losing human focus, that partner strategically rather than trying to own everything, and that experiment with new models while established schools protect legacy ones.

The mobile phone revolution in developing countries did not happen because those countries built cheaper landlines. It happened because they recognized that their constraints freed them to adopt superior technology. The same opportunity exists in business education, but only for schools willing to see their constraints as advantages rather than deficits. The question is not whether you can afford to compete with established schools on their terms. The question is whether you can afford not to build something different.

Wolfram Berger and Ulrich Hommel