MIT Sloan School of Management knows a thing or two about start-ups. The US school’s entrepreneurship faculty is among its most distinguished and over the past 10 years, Sloanies — the internal word for graduates of the school — have started nearly 250 businesses. Now, though, it is embarking on an all together different enterprise: a new business school in Kuala Lumpur.

This month, MIT Sloan announced a collaboration with Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), the nation’s central bank, to establish the Asia School of Business (ASB). The school, which will run a traditional two-year MBA programme, is slated to open in September 2016 with an inaugural class of about 35 students.

BNM Governor Zeti Akhtar Aziz is a driving force behind the alliance. “[Our goal] is to start a business school that produces the kind of talent that will go out and be part of the advancement of the emerging world,” she says.