Following the fifth anniversary of the Global Network for Advanced Management, Yale’s Edward A. Snyder and David Bach have written an essay in BizEd magazine explaining how the 29-school network has leveraged “the power of networked management education.”

The essay looks back on the Global Network’s first five years and analyzes some of the principles that have enabled it to grow from 21 to 29 schools, launching numerous innovative programs along the way. “We believed that a network offered many advantages over the typical globalization strategies of joint degree partnerships, student exchanges, and multiple campuses, which benefit a relatively narrow group of participants and often bear heavy administrative burdens,” write Snyder and Bach.

One of the benefits of such a network is expressed by Metcalfe’s Law, which says that the value of a network increases with the square of its nodes. Snyder and Bach provide the example of Global Network Weeks (GNWs). Held throughout the year. GNWs, they write, “allow students to supplement their studies by taking a specialized intensive course at another member school. Each time a new school joins the initiative, the value increases exponentially, because students at all participating schools have additional options for schools to visit and teams on each campus become more diverse.”

Despite the success of GNWs and the numerous other initiatives launched in the past five years, Snyder and Bach argue that the Global Network has only realized 10% of its potential to date. They see that as reason to be excited about what future years will bring: “We believe that we have created an effective platform for innovative networked management education that positions all our members to thrive in the changing world of higher education.”

Read the full essay.