Editorial

Citation

Norton, J. (2010), "Editorial", Strategic Direction, Vol. 26 No. 11. https://doi.org/10.1108/sd.2010.05626kaa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Strategic Direction, Volume 26, Issue 11

In our final issue of Volume 26, we follow a similar format to issue 11 from our previous volume. We are pleased to present five reviews of the 2010 EFMD Excellence in Practice Award winning papers. The EFMD Excellence in Practice Award attracts case studies describing an effective and impactful Leadership and Development intervention. These programs can be deployed by an organization (company, public sector, charity etc.) either together with their in house L&D organization or with an external L&D provider.

Now in its fourth year, the Award attracts case studies on best practices of cooperation between companies and business schools or executive education centers. This year’s competition attracted close to 40 entries showcasing high quality programs, designed to meet a specific strategic challenge within a company.

Our first piece: “Three-way partnership that delivers results” is a review of the award winning paper from the “special cases” category, entitled: “An innovative case of synergistic learning and development between venture capital, start-up and university” by Pierre Berthon, Perry Lowe, Woody Benson and Alex Blum. The paper documents the synergistic interaction between university (Bentley), startup (KickApps) and venture capital (Prism). While more complex than the traditional two-way model, it breaks new ground and offers important learning and development benefits from both a managerial and academic perspective.

The second review: “National Trust nurtures talent” looks at a paper by Paul Boniface and Billy Desmond entitled: “Developing internal consulting capability within the National Trust”, which won the “organizational development” category. The paper describes how Ashridge Consulting, part of a leading European business school, worked in collaboration with The National Trust to provide a development program for Functional Advisors.

In “Transforming IT managers into becoming strategic internal business partners”, Scott Farley and Howard Prager summarize their article: “Partnership in the design, development, and delivery of the advanced consulting skills program between HSBC Learning & Development and Lake Forest Graduate School of Management”, which won the “professional development” category. The article discusses HSBC’s partnership with Lake Forest Graduate School of Management, which developed a program that has led to improved client satisfaction with IT and enhanced IT capabilities.

“Search for leaders’ starts at home” reviews the “talent development” category award winning paper by Marcella Slechtenhorst and Cindy Bucher, entitled: “Developing a sustainable supply of leaders: a partnership between Pon and ORMIT”. The paper discusses how the collaboration between Pon and ORMIT came about, and how Pon’s objective of taking more managers from its own pool of talent with the objective of forming a powerful company was achieved with the help of ORMIT as a learning and development partner.

Our final review: “MAN engineers global leadership” summarizes Tatjana Thiel, Lutz Kaufmann, and Gerd Islei’s paper entitled: “Engineering the future: a transformational learning journey”, which was the winner of the “executive development” category, and describes how two management programs (executive and general) were successfully developed to help the company globalize its strategy, operations and structures, to help trigger a culture change that would transform it to a global company.

We follow these articles with our more traditional review articles.

“NC Software Applications Solutions” provides academics, practitioners, and students with an opportunity to understand the dynamics of growing an entrepreneurial business in the emerging markets of the high-tech industry in Poland; “Making sense of ideas” details how the use of multi-dimensional symbolic models within an organization enables people to connect better, both with ideas and each other to enhance collaboration and inventiveness.

“Managing numbers and knowledge” discusses how, with competition growing ever fiercer, organizations must possess the means to innovate constantly in order to remain ahead of the pack, and our final article for this issue: “Tapping into the base of pyramid business” examines ways in which Japanese companies, with a particular focus on Yakult Honsha Co. Ltd, are finding innovative ways to tap into base of the pyramid (BOP) markets to increase their profit while simultaneously reducing poverty and contributing to BOP society.

Juliet Norton