Interim reflections on the corporate university and SME academy business development innovation and its diffusion

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on and inform about learning points from ECUANET, a two‐year duration best practice action research and transnational networking project as it approaches its final stage.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper explicates the key positive and obfuscating dynamics that the project team have had to, and will have to conjure with, in reaching its recommendations about the evolution of best practice in corporate university and enterprise academy design and management. The project partners have operated a voluntary or self selection process in their recruitment of corporate partner organisations to participate in the project action research case study work. The research methodology was based upon the corporate university blueprint architecture and browser toolkit to provide depth in practice evidence and a searchable database for comparative case to case practice evaluation of the key performance indicators (KPIs)

Findings

It was found that the corporate university organisation and business development concept is a subject area which is either well understood by company management and education institutions or there is considerable confusion about its role and purpose. This comment does not apply comfortably and consistently universally as there are very different states of maturity, adoption and interpretation in the concept's development and practice across the world region by region. From a wide and diverse portfolio of companies and organisations who where invited to participate in the action research case studies those who accepted have one very important characteristic in common: they are all intensively engaged in managing a major innovation, i.e. they already have the commitment and fortitude to making new ideas work in practice. The experience of this project confirms that to be successful in this turbulent era of intensive new learning management, there needs to be continuous commitment to engendering innovation diffusion in both strategic and tactically inspired new learning process management. In addition it also demands serious reflection about the creative nature of the learning leadership role and also the style of its management.

Originality/value

The a priori browser based corporate university blueprint model architecture employed in the empirical case study research mode proved to have both the depth and flexibility to provide a high quality evaluative framework and capture all the dynamics relating to the key variables in good corporate university design and management. The data base of case foundation information, KPIs and best practice outcomes will be one of the most comprehensive and world class quality reference sources published to date.

Citation

Dealtry, R. (2008), "Interim reflections on the corporate university and SME academy business development innovation and its diffusion", Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 20 No. 1, pp. 71-78. https://doi.org/10.1108/13665620810843656