The EconomistPublished: January 3, 2012WILL Brazil become a new source of inspiration for Western business schools? For the past fifteen years, they have mainly looked east. New business schools grew up in such fast-growing countries as China and Singapore, leading to a stream of student and faculty exchanges between Western and Eastern campuses.But a growing number of business schools are now looking south, with Brazil attracting most interest. The University of Virginia's Darden School of Business recently introduced a Brazilian residency as part of its Global Executive MBA (GEMBA). Students will go to Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro where they will spend two weeks attending classes, visiting local firms and learning about the region's business environment. And Canada's Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University has joined forces with Sao Paulo's FIA Business School, Mexico City's ITAM and Nashville's Vanderbilt University to develop what officials call an "Executive MBA programme for the Americas".The flurry of activity may not come as a surprise. Last year Brazil overtook Britain to become the world's sixth-biggest economy, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research. Yet despite the country's recent success and its wealth of natural resources, the story of the Brazilian economy in the second half of the twentieth century was one of underachievement. The longstanding joke is that Brazil is a country of the futureand always will be. Beyond political instability, observers point to decades of corporate mismanagement and a lack of strategies to maintain growth.But the country is the destination of choice for multinationals looking for a foothold in Latin America. It also boasts a sophisticated technology sector, enough oil, crops and breweries to be self-sufficient. And it has been chosen to host the world's two biggest sporting events in the next four years: the World Cup and the Olympic games. Add to that a growing middle class, and the economy should have a promising future.Will foreign business schools be able to influence the country's executives, given Brazil's historic tendency to be inward-looking and resistant to outside ideas? For it to keep growing, managers need to change their mindset, says Peter Rodriguez, senior associate dean at the Darden School of Business. And this is happening, he explains, as Brazil's economy is moving away from family-based firms towards more professionally managed companies. Increasingly, it is no longer lineage, social connections and good fortune that will get you ahead.Local firms are also keen to use business education to learn from recent failures in rich countries, notes Cesar Beltran, IESE Business School's Brazil director. "In this time of rapid growth they don't want to lose sight of the long-term picture for the sake of short term gain," he says. Mr Beltra also argues that more and more Brazilian companies want their managers to think globally.Marina Heck, of the OneMBA program at Brazil's FGV Business School, sees this as part of a wider trend of companies investing more in their management talent. In Brazil the war for talent is still raging. As a result, almost 90% of the students enrolled in the OneMBA programme