A Gateway Initiative for Global Responsibility Hosted by the GRLI · Back to www.grli.org
BE the Tipping Point — business education the tipping point
Impact Innovation Circles

Be the tipping point in business education.

Small circles of institutions, prototyping practical change in business education and leadership development — and paying the learning forward across the field.

Join a Circle Partner with us tippingpoint@grli.org
01 Why "BE the Tipping Point"?

Business schools and business education shape the leaders and industries that will determine whether we build a sustainable, regenerative, and globally responsible future. Business education helped normalise the logics that brought us here, and can help tip the field toward regenerative, just, and globally responsible practice.

700+

The aim is to engage more than one-third of recognised business schools worldwide in collaborative reinvention by 2030. That is equivalent to 30% of schools accredited by EFMD or AACSB — our strategic partners.

The context

We see negative tipping points accumulating around us — the breaching of planetary boundaries, widening inequality, and the social fractures that follow.

The response

Action-oriented and institutional peer-to-peer learning can result in a positive tipping point in and through business education.

BE the Tipping Point is a field-facing platform and convening space, co-convened by GRLI, GMI, IAJBS, and oikos International. It supports institutions with a practical space to convene, prototype, collaborate, and share learning — accelerating responsible transformation in business and management education.
02 The vision

The ambition, first set out on film.

The vision for BE the Tipping Point was first set out in our entry to the MacArthur Foundation's 100&Change competition. We did not win the grant — but the film did something more lasting: it crystallised the shared ambition, and brought together voices from networks and associations across the field in endorsement of it.

Endorsed by

AACSB International, EFMD Global, Association of African Business Schools, Network for Business Sustainability, Global Business School Network (GBSN), Sulitest, PRME i5 & regional Chapters, World Academy of Art & Science, Global Student Forum, Positive Impact Rating, Responsible Research for Business & Management (RRBM), and South African Business Schools Association (SABSA).

03 The challenge

We're all running experiments. But the learning stays isolated — and everyone reinvents the wheel.

04 What are Impact Innovation Circles?

Impact Innovation Circles (IICs) are small, participant-led peer-learning circles — six to nine institutions — anchored by GRLI Partners and Associates. They bring together faculty, researchers, and senior administrators already experimenting with change in their programmes, pedagogy, and institutional practice.

Prototype Learn across borders Pay it forward

This is not a programme handed to you. It is an emergent practice: your institution drives the work, and GRLI convenes lightly, provides facilitation scaffolding and a digital hub, and helps distil the outputs — while the projects stay co-owned by the institutions. Participation is free, confidential where it counts, and you keep ownership of your own work.

For the full session roadmap, anchor commitments, and time breakdown, see the IIC Participant Guide — or browse the Q&A below.

How a Circle forms: three anchor institutions, each bringing one to two allies, tessellating outward into a wider field of circles
Three Anchors · one to two Allies each · circles seeding circles
05 The invitation

Ready to join — or to explore a Circle?

If your institution is actively working to shift curriculum, pedagogy, or wider practice — and you are willing to pay the learning forward — we would like to hear from you. We will help you explore the next steps, whether you join as an Anchor institution or as an Ally.

What positive tipping point would you, or your institution, like to create?

Join a Circle Partner with us

Contact tippingpoint@grli.org — or reach Darija Miletic directly at darija.miletic@grli.org

THINK BIG.START SMALL.ACT NOW.
06 Questions & answers

The detail, briefly.

Who or what is BE the Tipping Point?
A field-facing platform and convening space hosted by GRLI, GMI, IAJBS, and oikos International. It aims to engage more than one-third of recognised business schools globally by 2030 in rapid, collaborative reinvention that serves people and planet in a regenerative way — and that reorients business and business education along the way.
Who signs up — the person or the school?
The institution signs up. A named Dean or Director endorsement confirms institutional commitment, alongside a working lead — a faculty or operations lead — who engages in the prototyping day to day.
How does a Circle form?
Each Circle is built around three Anchor institutions, each bringing one to two Allies — ideally across different regions — making a working Circle of six to nine. The cross-context design is deliberate: experiments tested in different settings generate learning that is more robust and more transferable. Anchors are institutional commitments, not individual ones — a named Dean or Director endorses the involvement, while a working lead stewards the prototype day to day.
How much time will this require?
A light, senior-friendly load: roughly ten hours across the full six-month cycle. That covers three virtual sessions (Explore, Experiment, Integrate), individual reflection between sessions, and light distillation of the output at the end.
What are the conditions of participation?
Three principles hold across all Circles:

No charge to join. Participation is a time-bounded institutional commitment, and does not automatically create GRLI Associate Partner status.

Confidential where it counts. Early sessions are confidential and formative, to support candid sharing. Outputs are published only with the owners' sign-off.

You keep your own work. Institutions retain ownership of their internal work. "Paying the learning forward" means co-creating one agreed public artefact — a one-pager, toolkit, or short case — not surrendering internal intellectual property.
What do participants get out of it?
A trusted cross-institution peer group focused on action rather than presentations; a tested prototype and an institutional uptake plan endorsed by your Dean or Director; and visibility through an openly shareable output that helps the wider field move.
What will we be expected to share publicly?
A single agreed artefact — a one-pager, toolkit, short case, recording, or set of notes — distilled from the Circle's learning, and published only with the owner's sign-off.
Will GRLI run our institutional project?
No. GRLI convenes, lightly facilitates, hosts the hub, and helps distil outputs. The projects remain co-owned by the institutions.
Is this already tested?
Yes. GRLI has hosted Cohorts and Circles with Partners and Associates over the past decade. The Deans & Directors Cohort is one example of an initiative that has led to a number of innovations in business and management education.
Which institutions are already involved?
The inaugural design meeting drew participants from Ateneo de Manila University, Católica Porto Business School, Deakin Business School, ESADE Business & Law School, Kühne Logistics University, University of Bristol Business School, University of Exeter Business School, University of Gothenburg School of Business, Economics & Law, University of South Wales, University of St. Gallen, UTS Business School, and Woxsen University, among others. The list is growing.
How do we join?
Confirm a Dean's endorsement and a working lead, confirm one to two Allied institutions, and share your inquiry and availability with us at tippingpoint@grli.org or darija.miletic@grli.org.