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Innovation In Business Schools: Creating Value Through Executive EducationAuthor:Arnoud de Meyer,
Associate Dean, INSEAD It may sound trite, but these are exciting times for executive education at business schools. Two trends have supported the currently growing importance of executive education. Increased internationalization and growing international competition call for the professionalization of management. In a protected environment it is easy to survive on the basis of talent, intuition and good networks. In a global economy one still needs these three success factors, but on top of that fierce competition also requires a good conceptual understanding of what professional management is all about. At the same time, we see that business schools have started to see executive education as a true academic endeavour on a par with other university activities. From the beginning at INSEAD we have treated executive programmes as equally challenging and important as our qualification programmes. But in many schools it was seen as a marginal activity, mainly to make some easy money. That had to change. Formal executive education becoming more important implies that we need to innovate continuously. In my position as associate dean for executive programmes, I have had the privilege of spotting a few trends, which I will summarize here under seven headings. 1. Partnerships between companies and business schoolsLike other areas of business we have evolved from a simple customer/supplier relationship whereby business schools sell programmes to companies, to a situation where schools and companies work in a true partnership of co-design and co-delivery. That is perhaps most obvious in some of the tailored programmes where we see quite often an intensive collaboration, in which faculty and executives from the customer organization contribute as a team to the learning process. But also in the area of open enrolment programmes we have been able at INSEAD to work closely with our customers on the integration of the pedagogical programme in the total package of executive development efforts made by the organization. Developing executives require a thorough capability analysis: what is needed for the job and which capabilities does the potential executive already master? Based on a capability gap analysis, one can groom executives for their next jobs with a set of five categories of activities: on the job training; special assignments; lateral job moves; mentoring; and formal education. This formal education can work extremely well on condition that it is well integrated within the broader portfolio of activities. We at INSEAD have been invited by a few organizations to engage in a continuous discussion on how to create and implement that integration. It will be obvious that such a deep partnership has to be limited to a small group of companies. But we have also learned that it is often quite simple to increase the integration of the educational programmes within the larger development effort. Ask yourself a few simple questions. Does the future participant understand why he/she goes on the programme? Can he/she participate with a few concrete projects and questions in mind in order to focus attention? Such a task-oriented participation will also increase the pressure on the participant to translate what he/she learned into the company's current issues. Immediately after the programme and perhaps six months later is there a feedback session with human resources and the participant's immediate boss on how the return on investment in education will be realized? These questions may sound mundane, but these are simple tools to increase the integration of executive education in the other development activities. Successful partnerships around executive education can gain a momentum of their own and often grow into the successful partnership of the company and the school, including hiring of MBA graduates, access to frontier research and other sources of knowledge, even influencing future research programmes. Such a partnership becomes a cheap and extremely valuable asset for a company in its ambition to become a leading organization. 2. Closer integration between concept and development and teaching.In many of our programmes I have observed an increase in the synergy between teaching and research. We at INSEAD believe strongly in what we call the virtuous circle of learning, or the constant interaction between three forces: the R&D carried out by the faculty; the practical experience and insights of the participants; and the quality of our pedagogical processes. Top of the bill is research which is translated into useful concepts through the mastery of our pedagogical process which stimulates our participants. Stimulated participants will ask tougher questions or confront faculty with more complex business problems and will challenge the faculty. Challenged faculty will see new opportunities for interesting research. Thus the educational activity becomes an integral part of the research process. In some of our specialized programmes we have been able to make this interaction work splendidly and it has led to programmes that barely need selling any more. Participants have the feeling of being part of the knowledge creation process and realize that they are learning concepts which can give them an advantage over the competition. In our tailored programmes we have seen an even closer integration between experience exchange and concept development. In some fields of management, knowledge had been developed by clinical case studies. The lead time between the development of these case studies and the concept development is often several years, too long for business. I have experienced that through intensive use of live case studies and project work, a great investment by faculty and participants, lively discussions and challenging presentations, we can shorten the development time considerably. We do the concept building together with the participants, in the classroom and immediately tailored to the specific needs of the company. That is where both company and faculty gain considerably and where tailored programmes really make sense. That's where executive education becomes thrilling and where we as a school cease to be a teaching institution, but become a learning institution where all, participants and faculty, learn. 3. InternationalizationInternationalization in management education has become a fashion. Every school is internationalizing, but I believe that few have understood what that really means. Thirty-six years of experience at INSEAD with international management education has taught us that it is not a numbers game: how many different nationalities are in the classroom? How many cases on companies from newly industrializing countries? Diversity in the classroom and among the faculty may well be a necessary condition but it is far from sufficient. International education in management is much more about a cultural mind set: how much are you prepared to listen to different cultural styles and to what extent are you able to integrate opinions based on value systems and experiences you don't understand or even of which you disapprove in order to reach a better decision? Internationalization in management requires also a capability to work with increased degrees of complexity and uncertainty, compared to a 'national' management situation. Business schools have to be prepared to let the complexity and uncertainty enter the classroom and faculty have to be able to face situations where they may have even less answers than before. We have worked very hard at creating at INSEAD a spirit of openness based on an atmosphere without dominating culture and on a certain degree of modesty that we don't have all the answers for managing in highly competitive international economies. 4. Experimenting with new technologiesMulti-media technologies, Internet, groupware, distance
learning and intensive use of communication technologies are very
much the
new name of the education game. We have extensively experimented
with these in our own executive programmes. Multimedia
cases and simulations have been used to enrich participants' experience,
case discussions
have been carried out over large distances through the Internet,
groupware has been used to have participants carry out projects
in between teaching modules, access to databases and surfing the
Net have been encouraged to stimulate personal learning during
executive programmes or tailored programmes. We have packaged some
of the results of that experimentation in a very successful one-week
programme on “Competing in the Information Age”. We
are extremely excited about the possibilities of these technologies
and are constantly experimenting to understand how they can change
our business. I have at this stage four personal observations.
The use of multi-media technologies definitely 5. Action orientationIt may be obvious from the previous paragraphs that action orientation has become a very strong trend. In earlier days of executive education my predecessors would have described it mainly as broadening the mind beyond the functional disciplines in which one worked. That is still an objective but the question, 'What do we do with this on Monday next week?' has become more and more emphasized. Action orientation can be strongly enhanced by a few simple tools, eg, action booklets, project work, interest groups and presentations and a certain degree of flexibility in the programme design through electives. Providing focus for the participants by sending them to a programme with a concrete project to be finished by the end of the programme can also be very effective for the transfer of knowledge. 6. Programmes for top managementA thorough competitive analysis has shown us that there is very little offered by business schools for very senior managers. Perhaps the schools were not prepared for this: it is easier to adapt a case discussion prepared for an MBA class to an audience of junior or middle managers than for a group of top people. Perhaps very senior managers thought that there was very little to learn. Both groups have probably to make an effort. At INSEAD we have three very successful experiences at this level both with a consortium (Executive Forum) and with two open enrolment programmes (AVIRA and The Challenge of Leadership). We have also organized a number of programmes for boards. From these highly innovative programmes we have learned a few things. First, the style of learning is totally different. Faculty have to act much more as facilitators and idea providers than as teachers. The knowledge is often available in the room among the participants and the challenge is to guide and facilitate the debate in such a way that a maximum learning is exchanged. Second, faculty have to approach the programme much more as a team. A sequential showing of faculty and topics is not in line with the complexity and the simultaneity of the issues with which top managers are confronted. Very often the density of the interaction is so strong that it is simply impossible for one faculty member to manage the debate effectively. Obviously one needs the faculty with the depth and breadth of knowledge in order to interact with highly successful top managers. Third, there is a thrill about the fact that the people in the room are real decision-makers with little time. What they learn will be applied immediately. But it puts an enormous pressure on the faculty to ensure that the participants go away with enough confidence about the concepts that have been discussed. 7. A balance between open enrolment programmes and tailored activitiesOver the past years I have observed increased interest in the use of tailored programmes. I would like to warn not to go too far in this. Open enrolment programmes have a lot of value because they expose participants to other organizations and are often a good benchmark to see where the company stands in terms of professionalization. In order to make the choice between tailored and open enrolment programmes and to determine the portfolio of educational activities, I suggest a reflection on three questions.
I don't want to become too mechanistic about it but the combinations of answers leads to 36 different types of programmes. Some of them may make no sense but I usually see about 15 different situations. Each of these require a different type of educational programme in terms of organization and style. Two examples will make that clear. If one wants to train a few managers in some sophisticated tools which can be learned independent from the environment in which one works, eg, sophisticated market research techniques, you are probably better advised to use an open enrolment programme. If, on the other hand, you want to train a large group of middle managers in strategic concepts in order to change the competitive situation of the company then you had better look for a highly tailored programme. These are just two straightforward examples but they show that executive education in a company needs a portfolio of different approaches. This is my summary of the trends of what is going on in executive education. They are, by design, not exhaustive and suggest only a few of the interesting changes and innovations we are confronted with at INSEAD. But one thing is clear to us. Executive education is changing quite rapidly and in a very interesting direction. It becomes a real strategic tool for organizations and we can only hope that senior management will pay the same attention to the development of its human resources as it pays attention to the evolution of its financial resources. Both are in the end the two major resources that a firm has in order to create value. And that is what executive education really has to be about: how will it create value for your organization?
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