Message from the Dean

Humanity has been confronted with serious social challenges, such as income and wealth inequality, diminishing social mobility, as well as climate change which are difficult to address partly due to collective myopia of humanity. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic has only made these challenges more pertinent and urgent. In this era of multiple tectonic changes, business schools have an unshakable responsibility in helping individuals, institutions (companies and NGOs) and societies to better navigate through these turbulent times, and to make the world a better place both economically and socially.

Since our inception on November 21, 2002, Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (CKGSB) has been innovating beyond the traditional boundaries of business education in order to play a catalyst role in addressing some of these societal and environmental challenges. Our mission is to cultivate transformative business leaders with a global perspective and responsibility, who drive and embrace innovation and to lead with empathy and compassion. CKGSB has been and will continue to expand the traditional focal points of business schools, to promote economic prosperity and social advancement.

Our success in serving this group rests primarily with the new insights, skills and perspectives that we offer to help business leaders stay ahead of the curve and better navigate through the world’s tectonic changes. For these influential business leaders and entrepreneurs, their choice of program is fundamentally insights-driven, and less shaped by rankings or accreditations.

World-class Faculty and Unrivaled China Insights

Most of our 40+ full-time professors held tenured positions at top academic institutions worldwide - such as the University of Chicago, Columbia University, Darden School of Business, University of Michigan, MIT, Wharton and Yale - prior to joining CKGSB, and thus bring cutting edge theories and practices from around the world and a global view in understanding China business.

After joining CKGSB, they have continued producing original research - which has been made possible thanks to the generous support from the Li Ka Shing Foundation. Moreover, our faculty members - most of whom are Chinese by heritage – have a native understanding of Chinese business and culture. This, combined with the school’s research focus and access to China’s most influential alumni network, allows CKGSB to offer unsurpassed insight into China business, China’s transformation and its potential global implications. In fact, three of CKGSB’s professors have become inaugural Chief Strategy Officers at Alibaba Group, Ant Financial and JD.com.

Unparalleled Network in China and Wider Region

As a result of our unique insights and approach, CKGSB has been able to attract the top leaders of the most influential companies – Alibaba, ByteDance, CITIC, Fosun, DiDi, Midea, Sinopec and TCL – in China and the wider region. More than half of CKGSB’s 18,000 alumni are at the CEO or Chairman level, and they collectively lead one-fifth of China’s most valuable brands. CKGSB has also trained more than 4,000 senior global executives and successfully delivered custom-designed programs to the senior management teams of multinational companies like Aesop, Agilent Technologies, Clifford Chance, Cummins, Google and Lego Education.

Global Ecosystem for a New Generation of Unicorn

Our experiments in fostering a new generation of economic disruptions represent another innovative edge of CKGSB. Economic disruption - evident in the rise of unicorn companies, newly emerged large-scale companies and newly-minted billionaires – is central to economic development and social advancement, playing a critical role in promoting upward social mobility, particularly among young people. According to CB Insights, among the 1,170 unicorns worldwide, the U.S. with 628 unicorn companies and mainland China with 175 unicorn companies lead with the most.

CKGSB is the first business school to offer programs specifically designed for unicorn and soon-to-be unicorn founders and co-founders since 2015 in China. We have been partnering with some of the most prominent Chinese and global companies, like Alibaba, Amazon, Bytedance, Baidu, JD.com, Microsoft (China), SenseTime, Tencent, and leading venture capitals, to develop unicorn and soon-to-be-unicorn companies. Our unicorn programs focus on meeting the needs of founders and co-founders of unicorn and unicorn-to-be companies. To date, 1,000+ founders of companies with at least Series A funding have studied at CKGSB, including the founders of 136 unicorn companies in total and 38 unicorn companies listed on CB Insights (2017-2022).

Starting in 2016, we began extending our successful experience in China to Europe, delivering 11 programs that have helped more than 200 global entrepreneurs across 30 industries and 37 countries to develop into potential unicorns. Among them, 49% have secured Pre-A and A+ round funding, and three have become unicorn companies (Unbabel, Portugal; Sword Health, Portugal; and Teladoc Health, USA).

Our vision is to build a global ecosystem that can foster a new generation of economic disruptions with a renewed and enhanced emphasis on global responsibility, social purpose and long-term perspective. We are working with like-minded partners—such as Berkeley Engineering, IMD, UNESCO and the Dubai Executive Council—to establish this ecosystem, starting with programs for unicorn and soon-to-be-unicorn founders in Africa, GCC, ASEAN and RCEP, Europe and the Americas.

Social Responsibility and Social Innovation

Our unique experiments with social innovation start from our pioneering efforts to systematically incorporate the humanities - such as history, religion and philosophy - into our core business curricula since 2005. On the individual level, we hope to inspire business leaders to aspire to not just a ‘rich’ life, but also an ‘enriched’ and even ‘enlightened’ life. We believe that the humanities - particularly courses engaging global history, religion and different philosophical traditions - are essential for the business leaders of today and tomorrow to manage globally diverse teams. The humanities can also help mitigate humanity’s collective myopia, and foster a long-term vision and a broader view of business for greater social, global and common good.

At CKGSB, we guide our students to focus on the whole wealth cycle - not only to learn how to better compete and collaborate, but also to focus on why they do business and what to do with their wealth for the greater good. Hence, since 2010, we have been requiring our EMBA students to complete 48 hours of community and philanthropy work (equivalent to 6 days of course work), in order to graduate. This initial experiment with our EMBA students was later extended to all other degree programs at CKGSB in 2012. As a result, our students have cumulatively dedicated more than 165,000 hours of work to their communities.

In 2017, we started offering a compulsory social innovation module, because we believe that key issues facing humanity today (such as income and wealth inequality, diminishing social mobility and sustainability) cannot be solely addressed by the business, government or non-profit sector acting alone, but rather may require collaboration among all parties. This is why we promote collaboration across government, businesses, NGOs, civil society and international organizations by experimenting with social innovation. Since 2018, social innovation has become a required module for all programs across our school. Then in 2021, our school launched the “Social Innovation and Business for Good” field course, which requires EMBA students to incorporate ESG in their institutions. We are proud to be the first to offer such a course among business schools in the region.

Going forward, we seek to work with schools, businesses, governments, civil society and multilateral institutions worldwide to continue pushing the boundaries of business education to play a constructive role in addressing some of the most pressing challenges facing the global community. Particularly in light of climate change, growing income and wealth divide and diminishing social mobility, it has become imperative for business schools to play a catalyst role in advancing cooperation among the different stakeholders. More than ever, we need globally-minded and socially-responsible business leaders, who can compete with compassion and empathy. We, at CKGSB, will continue to stay committed, future-oriented and innovative in driving that agenda forward.