Comment: The statistics about Ireland get longer and more impressive: the lowest level of unemployment in the European Union; the second lowest national debt, and set to lead all OECD economies in growth over the next decade. We are regularly cited as a world-class economy at the top of the premier league of European economies.
When it comes to executive education, Ireland's position is less impressive. Currently, no Irish executive education programme ranks in the global listings.
High standards of education have been a significant driver of Ireland's economic success. However, it would be foolish to expect that growth can continue if we don't continue to equip ourselves with the necessary skills and education to manage effectively, lead well and compete in the global market. This task, the ongoing development of practising managers, is the business of executive education and the reason that Trinity and the Irish Management Institute (IMI) recently joined forces to form the Graduate School of Management.
Executive development requires a global perspective. There is a need to marry management practice, learning and culture when seeking to innovate.
Internationally, there has been a shake-out in the executive education industry. Some centres have dropped out of the rankings while others, often with innovative structures and offerings, have replaced them.
The nature of the product has also changed. Companies rely increasingly on customised programmes, where the learning objectives are aligned with the direct needs of the organisation. This is particularly true for the most successful global corporations.
European executive education providers now increasingly match the long dominant US industry leaders. Of Europe's leading economies, only Germany and Ireland have failed to make the necessary investment to create a world ranked executive education school. This is a weakness in the architecture of our knowledge economy. It threatens our capacity to develop, attract and retain managerial talent.
International evidence suggests that innovation sticks locally once the right conditions are in place. Managerial talent is one of the key conditions. We will not see sufficient return on Ireland's investment in research and development unless we have the complementary development of management talent.
Research also shows that the value of an idea or a technology depends on the business model employed. Good ideas can flounder to inferior technology with an inappropriate business model.
The traditional mode of delivery of executive education was through open enrolment programmes, with managers from a variety of companies in a classroom setting together. Course length globally is about five days.
In recent years, growth in the business has been in the area of customised courses. These are tailored to the needs of a specific company and the leadership is shared between company executives of faculty from the learning partner. In the US, the trend has been towards increasing reliance on customised programmes by corporation.
This is not driven by upfront cost considerations. The Wharton School in Pennsylvania estimates that customised costs can run 50 per cent to 60 per cent ahead of open enrolment. The attraction is that action learning - putting people to work on real business problems - will yield higher dividends.
Siemens has run a customised programme on a global basis with Babson College, which this week announced an alliance with Trinity and IMI. Executives work through project ideas and strategies as part of the courses. The company will end up funding some of these projects and will track the contribution of Babson to the outcome of such initiatives.
However, this US trend is not universal. Asian companies find the cross-company learning available in open enrolment programmes to be particularly attractive.
The executive education industry has a number of interesting features. Institutes and universities that succeed in achieving global recognition are those that can best combine academic rigour with commercial awareness. Faculty talent must be diverse and represent thought-leadership, and there are often clusters of excellence.
The recent Business Week Top 20 rankings on executive education throw up some interesting clusters. Ontario hosts four of the top schools for open enrolment, while Spain hosts three of the top customised schools - two in Barcelona alone.
There are areas of strength in Irish business schools. The Smurfit School of Business and Trinity have earned global ranking for their respective MBA programmes, while the executive MSc programmes run jointly by Trinity and the IMI since the 1970s have produced some excellent leaders in the public and private sectors.
The challenge facing Irish business is to remain globally competitive through achieving productivity growth. This is as true for indigenous firms as it is for the multinational companies' subsidiaries located here.
Government can play its part by ensuring competition in services and investment in infrastructure. For companies, it is important to recognise the international trend that investment in management development is increasingly being seen as contributing to the growth of a company's intangible assets.
The location in Ireland of a globally ranked executive education school is vital. While Irish firms can obviously purchase executive education on the global market this comes with a number of disadvantages. It is only a small number of firms that will be able to negotiate a truly customised product from an international seller. Even then, the research and knowledge base of the provider will not be sufficient to yield the productivity enhancements that come from locally informed research.
The country's future economic development depends to a large degree on our ability to generate new knowledge and to innovate. If we are to remain at the cutting edge, then we have to invest in people and managements to underpin an innovation-led business culture.
Dr Gerard McHugh is head of the School of Business at TCD and Dr Tom McCarthy is chief executive of the Irish Management Institute.
