NEW YORK — Business school leaders from around the world gathered at the Yale Club of New York City on Thursday for the official launch of the Global Network for Advanced Management.

School of Management Dean Edward Snyder announced plans to create a network of partnerships between Yale and 20 international business schools about five months ago. The network aims to help member schools exchange ideas and collaborate on projects, but most aspects of the program remain undetermined. Deans and professors from a majority of member schools attended Thursday’s launch, discussing expectations for the network’s future at a media roundtable.

The network is the first of its kind in modern business education: most other international partnerships have typically involved just two or three business schools and had a pre-determined framework. Snyder has called those two- or three-school partnership models limited, arguing that allowing more institutions to work together will increase the efficiency and collaborative possibilities of an international network.

Administrators at the roundtable said they appreciate the unconventional route Snyder has taken in forming the new network.

“Our host, Yale, has been known not to follow the dogma, the prescribed model for business schools, so that assures me that this aggregation is going to be imaginative,” said Ricardo Lim, dean of the Asian Institute of Management, a network school in the Philippines. “It’s going to be creative about its next steps.”

Snyder told the News in February that his goal in creating the network was to provide the “infrastructure” necessary for future collaboration while also allowing member institutions to shape the partnership after its launch. The 21 schools in the network have agreed to an initial term of three years, ending June 30, 2015.

Administrators who attended the launch said the exchange of ideas facilitated by the network will be a particularly valuable asset to modern business education.

David Bach ’98, dean of programs at IE Business School in Spain, said business faculty today must focus more on “making students think” than on simply disseminating knowledge, as information is so readily available for students online and through other channels.

Dina Dommett GRD ’93, associate dean for programs at the London School of Economics, said modern business students should be taught to take a “diagnostic,” inquisitive approach to their studies. She added that the diverse perspectives and strategies available across the network schools will provide a “powerful” teaching mechanism.

In addition to discussing the benefits of the new network, administrators also highlighted the unique challenges to business education in their home countries.

“At our school, we face a situation where business leaders are now trusted by about 15 percent of the population,” said Damien McLoughlin, a marketing professor at UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School in Ireland. “That’s a shocking situation in the social contract between business and society.”

Firmanzah, dean of the University of Indonesia’s faculty of economics, said the network will help its students better address modern business problems — ones he said “no country can solve alone” — by examining them through multiple perspectives.

The network includes business schools from Asia, South America, Europe and Africa.

DANIEL SISGOREO