Corporate universities: our expert opinion

No-one can deny the worth of corporate universities any more. However, now that the concept has reached maturity, we can see that six different models meet the various specific goals.

Support for strategy implementation:

• this responds to problems concerning the need for rapid execution. Medium-term strategies hardly exist any more, and everyone needs to be able to react quickly. If it takes six months to carry out a change in strategy, any advantage is lost. These days, any changes to a plan should be implemented within several weeks. A clear distinction should be made here, though, between the stable part of the vision and short-term plans. The former provides direction and the latter concerns performance.

Improving performance:

• this goal is often set by executive management keen on getting a good return on the investment in training. In this case, the indicators are quite clear, and the measurement of efficiency is mainly done through the evaluation of participants by their bosses.

Creating a common culture and networks, mobilising large numbers of staff together, improving transverse work and sharing best practice and knowledge (Knowledge management):

• the objective is to instil common values rapidly.

4. Dealing with concrete projects:

• frequently in the case of «action learning» or «problem-based learning», programmes focus on real case studies affecting the company rather than on academic content. Contributions from third-party advisors involve working and communication methods as well as leadership questions in group work. The client plays the role of an executive board which designates an internal sponsor for each of the projects examined.

5. Reinventing the company and bringing in new sense of dynamism for the company and its strategy:

• transforming its culture, organisation and business model; improving staff skills and leadership; and identifying high flyers. Often when there are important changes at the head of a company, the client is both the executive board and the HR director.

6. Providing qualifications and professional accreditation for staff, a role which brings it closer to more traditional forms of training where we find programmes on the professional skills needed in the company. In this case, the training task can be entirely subcontracted to a third party. The adoption of new learning technologies provides considerably increased scope to these initiatives:

• by transferring the time spent mastering concepts and methods to distance- learning, new learning technologiesenable classroom time to be devoted to the principal mission of these programmes - sharing experiences and building networks;
• by allowing the creation of gateways and virtual communities, new learning technologies provide universities with new ways of presenting material and interacting;
• by taking the programmes out of the exclusive realm of the university, they enable virtual universities to be created, democratising access to knowledge and the capitalisation of know-how.