When you arrive at HBS for the AMP, you become part of a living group consisting of 8 or 9 people who live together throughout the entire program. We try to ensure that each living group includes 2 or 3 from each one of those major geographic regions. The participant composition in our two classrooms change three times during the course of the program in order to bring every person in the program in contact with everyone else. The objective is for each participant to build network connections with people in their own and other industries across all continents of the world so that by the end of the program there are few major cities in the world where you would not have a friend and colleague from your AMP group. That sounds like a valuable take-away.
People do indeed bring differing levels of expertise.
For example, if you're discussing a question related to financing a business, obviously the people with a financial background will be able to offer insights that people from marketing might never have considered. But everyone has the opportunity to contribute. This diverse collection of backgrounds, industries, geographies, and skill sets enables us to capture some remarkable collective wisdom in a single classroom session. It is, however, a very challenging, fast-paced process where facility with the English language, for example, is critical to gaining the maximum benefit. You rise early for an 8 a.m. discussion group.