When you’re traveling with INSEAD students, everyone has a different passport. When we hang out together, there’s invariably a great deal of cultural comparison.

There are small cultural differences, like the ways that investors politely turn down a deal. The Indian investor says it’s “great but too expensive”. The American investor says it’s “fascinating”. The Israeli investor says “let’s do my project instead!”

And there are deeper similarities – Israel being one of many conflict zones around the world. Issues of belonging, stories of displacement, but also hope and ingenuity. As a global group, we brought a global perspective to the local situation.

Traveling with INSEAD students feels like a deliberate experiment. What would happen if we brought representatives from 20 different countries together in Israel? What happens is that participants share a lot of global context and nuance.

That’s how the conversation goes when we’re sitting together at lunch. “In India, in Morocco, in China…”

‍