The Exec-Ed Zone

We are in the process of expanding the depth and scope of the executive education program data we publish on the IEDP.info database. For the last few years we have focused very much on the top business school providers. This in itself is a difficult group to identify. The core constitutents are easily identifiable - the likes of Harvard, IMD, Chicago GSB, London Business School, INSEAD, Michigan/Ross etc but as you move out from these towards the margins of the inner core it becomes more complicated to say with any certainty who is "in" and who should be "out".

As such the obvious solution is to push the boundaries of those we include wider. Those only interested in the very top schools will still be able to search their open programs quickly as we have decided that we shall use the FT Executive Education Rankings published each year in May as the basis for the "global premier league" of business school providers - although this has its weaknesses as well. We shall then start to add the best European and N American regional business schools to the database - so that those who are not looking for the global reach (or expense) or for something more domestically focused and applicable will have relevant results too.

But this is only part of the problem of categorising Executive Education. Working out whether a program is targeted at junior, middle or senior management is often not clear. What may be appropriate for the Managing director of an SME will probably not be appropriate for the CEO of a quoted company. What may be good for someone new to a middle management role may actually be provided by an organisation better known for its staff or sales training. And as this last example indicates business schools are not the "be all and end all" of executive edcuation provision. There is a huge - and growing - supply of commercial training providers competing for the same market.

Add in to this mix the army of consultants who have leadership and development training services as part of their offerings and the burgeoning sector of executive coaches  and the picture starts to get more complex yet again.

Over-arching all this is the fact that the whole sector is very fragmented: there are many thousands of providers ranging from international organisations with hundreds of millions of dollars of turnover to single-person specialist consultants who can lead their field in specific niches. At IEDP we are determined to try and pull all this information together into a manageable form - where senior management and HR professionals can access the data and leave and share feedback.

If you have any views or comments please leave them below. Also I would be delighted if any of our interested readers would be happy to complete an online survey on this topic - it will only take 5 minutes (all the questions are multiple choice) and if you leave your contact details we will enter you for a draw for an iPod Touch. To take the survey please click here.