What is the value of academic knowledge and executive education for Learning & Development in the corporate world? How can L&D leaders bridge academic knowledge and business in practice and build a routine of learning in their organisations? MERIT Summit in Vienna, 16-17 January 2019 will bring together corporate and executive education professionals for debates and collaborative exploration on this topic, among many others.

Trends and challenges

A recent article – Do Executives Need To Go To Business School? – highlights the findings of a study conducted by CarringtonCrisp on the latest trends in executive education while taking a look at the way business schools approach L&D developments in the corporate sector.

The executive world is evolving, and fast, and business schools aim to deliver what business needs. Three of the speakers at the upcoming MERIT Summit, quoted in the article, reveal their insight and observations on the challenges and approaches of business schools.

According to Dr Pekka Mattila, Associate Dean for Executive Education at Aalto University School of Business (Finland), schools possess expertise that is difficult for consultancies and other learning providers to match. Still, it seems that academia and the corporate world need an interface to translate business school expertise into transformational learning for individual companies.

Lessons learned

Another speaker at MERIT 2019, Helga Pattart-Drexler, who will share insight from WU Executive Academy (Austria), confirms the increasing demand for highly customised learning solutions. As Head of Executive Education, she explains her team’s goal is to be able to deliver highly relevant and actionable learning content. However, to ensure the highest impact, innovation and creativity should first be placed at the centre of organisations, Ms Pattart-Drexler says.

In addition to participating in customised experiences, employees at different levels need to combine in-class learning with learning on the job to be able to reap the rewards of the process. Anders Richtnér, CEO and Associate Professor at Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) (Sweden), says that “SSE adopts the 70-20-10 learning method, whereby 70% of learning is done on the job, 20% through coaching and mentoring, and only 10% delivered in a traditional classroom.” He also emphasises how important it is to keep in mind that learning is a lifelong journey. Learning is not a one-time occurrence and both executives and business schools need to be committed to it as a long-term and continuous process. And even more so in the future.

With plenty of innovative approaches, challenges, and best practices, MERIT Summit brings together leaders of organisational transformation for collaborative exploration on what it takes to successfully co-create the much needed corporate culture of learning at the speed of change of the business environment.