How do I write a letter that welcomes you all, thanks you for your reviews, your willingness to serve as a session chair, includes important information about the conference and the great city of Manchester, and also sends that positive vibe throughout the wonderful scholarly community that we are? Reviewer 2 would say that I am trying to achieve too many things in one letter and that I would need to stick to one point and one point only.

I kept pondering about this for quite some time until I realized it is actually very simple: we all go beyond the obvious. And with ‘we’, I literally mean all of us, including you. Going beyond the obvious is the one-liner that summarizes it all.

It is not obvious these days to get together as a global community of scholars. You are from all over the world. You each have your opinions, ideas, values, and ideologies. You each operate within a specific institutional setting. Traveling has become less efficient, more costly and more difficult. Cultural differences are sometimes presented to us as getting in the way instead of providing a starting point for an interesting conversation. Yet here we are! And that feels great.

Going beyond the obvious is also what I had in mind when deciding on the overall theme of the conference: Generational Shifts and International Business: Navigating Demographic Change in a Diverging World. Demographic change is generally slow and predictable. Interestingly, more and more countries are experiencing ultra-low birth rates. While some countries age and shrink much faster than anticipated, some others are still growing and have a young population. These place-based demographic asymmetries have huge and non-obvious implications for movement of labor, capital, and arbitrage opportunities of multinational firms. Especially in a multipolar word characterized by geo-economic fragmentation. Consider this an invitation to think about that.

Three individuals have clearly gone beyond the obvious and we will recognize them for their efforts. Our AIB Fellows, under the leadership of Tamer Cavusgil, Andrew Delios and Lucia Piscitello, have decided to award the following individuals for going beyond the obvious:

• Güler Sabancı, Former Chairwoman, Sabancı Holding, International Executive of the Year
• David Bach, President of IMD Lausanne, International Educator of the Year
• Professor Peter Hall, Harvard University, John Fayerweather Eminent Scholar Award

All three will speak at the conference, and I am eager to listen to their presentations. I hope to see you there.

All this is possible because some of your colleagues have gone above and beyond. The Alliance Manchester Business School’s Local Organizing Committee with Jess Shaw, Louise Montague, Helen Dean, Tracey Moreland, and headed by Timothy Devinney and Head of School Kenneth McPhail is the team responsible for making it all happen here in Manchester. All academic staff look forward to welcoming everyone. It is the nitty-gritty details that matter. Hotels, catering, company visits, media, you name it. They did it! On the academic side, the 24 Track Chairs did a phenomenal job in handling all your submissions, getting your paper(s) reviewed and helping me with scheduling the accepted papers. Grazia Santangelo has organized the pre-conference workshops and consortia meetings with her team. And let us not forget to mention our colleagues who have organized the Fellows Cafés, the Teaching Cafés, and the Research Methods Clinics.

We also went beyond the obvious by adding Research and Policy: A Day of Cross-Cutting Dialogue. Supported by Manchester Metropolitan University, the AIB UK & Ireland Chapter, Pro-Vice Chancellor Dominic Medway and with Heinz Tuselmann as a trailblazer, a team of Manchester colleagues coordinated by Matthew Allen and Mohammad Roohanifar have put together a full day of sessions where academics and policymakers meet. This is making IB scholarship matter in practice!

Finally, I would have collapsed under the weight of organizing such a conference without the help of the AIB Secretariat, Tunga, Kathy, Ieva, Michelle, Anne, Bernice, and Dan. I also want to recognize the work of Caroline McDonald, my program assistant, and the University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business for their support.

I invite you all to go beyond the obvious in the coming days.

Sjoerd Beugelsdijk
Vice-President Program/2026 Program Chair, Academy of International Business
J. Willis Cantey Chair in International Business, Darla Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina