The Hindu Business Line : Global B2B mantra

In the normal course, one would have expected them to make a beeline for some of the big names in business learning — Wharton, Harvard, Insead, IMD and whatever the B-School happens to be the flavour of the season.

Not so in this case. When seven industrial giants from across the globe decided to get on a single platform in Amsterdam nearly two years back, they decided to leave the B-Schools out of the loop. And, today, the USP of this executive learning model for top managers for a clutch of companies around the world is that it is a B2B model with no mediator in the guise of a B-School.

The first brain-storming session involving 40 executives from these companies is a distant memory and the International Consortium Program, or ICP as it has come to be known in the knowledge-sharing echelons of global business, has travelled a fair distance. The last 18 months has seen nine such conclaves being hosted in seven countries and 2005 promises at least three more of such outings.

Each module is placed in a geographical space with a specific company playing the host. The emphasis is on imbibing new ideas and evolving different perspectives to tackle a set of given problems facing the corporate world.

With different mindsets at work in tandem, tackling the same problems, the idea is to challenge the existing level of business thinking through this action learning process.

The August 2003 Amsterdam meeting hosted by ABN Amro had as participants ABB, Benfield, BHP Billiton, Boeing, Standard Bank and Tata. Since then, the seven-strong consortium has shrunk to four with three members opting out to "sort out internal issues" and come back "when ready". The big names that dropped out in the second year were Benfield, BHP Billiton and Boeing.

Says Mr Satish Pradhan of Tata Sons: "The invitation to join the consortium came to us as there was keenness on participation from India. And from India, we were their choice.

The purpose of the partnership is to generate and orchestrate an exceptional global leadership development experience for high potential senior executives across the globe. ICP is acting as a catalyst in this learning process."

ICP had in its radar two issues that CEOs all over the world were getting concerned about:

Playing in a globalised environment and

Striking the right balance on knowledge sharing with similar minded organisations.

The message that is coming out of ICP is unambiguous — if a company is to grow globally, it needs to become a pro-active learning organisation.

The unique aspect of ICP is that it is the business houses that run this consortium, according to Dr Yury Boshyk, founder-director of Global Executive Learning, France, and former professor of `Strategy and International Environment of Business at IMD, Switzerland.

"As against what has been in existence all these years in the form of initiatives run by business schools, in this instance it is a B2B model. The idea was to try and bring together the most talented people at senior levels in companies to share their experiences of globalisation and explore leadership and strategic issues that face companies in a mutually beneficial way," he says.

Thus, ICP chose as its central theme for 2003, "From Market Driven to MarketDriving Strategies, Products and Services". The road show moved from Amsterdam, through St Loius, to Japan. In 2004, the theme shifted to "Growth Strategies in Emerging Markets". This time round, the show had as venues Amsterdam, St Loius and China. The inaugural session saw the likes of Edward de Bono and Fernando Lanzer hold forth on "New World: New Realities".

Roughly a year down the line, the ICP drew on thought leaders such as Harry Stonecipher, Raymond Madden and Hellmut Schute to share their knowledge with the business community as they travelled from Boston, through Mumbai before winding up at Johannesburg inNovember 2004.

The idea was clear. Get senior leaders of these companies to sit together, share knowledge and also draw on the theoretical wisdom of thought leaders. At such sit-ins, the idea was to get the company brass to look collectively at issues facing businesses in a non-traditional way.

Structuring of the ICP was far from easy. It was decided that there would be no contract but a charter as code of conduct binding the participants. Instead, there is goodwill and trust and a high degree of flexibility that naturally comes from consortiums. And it was left to the companies to have their representatives steering the consortium.

Says Dr Boshyk: "It is unique not only in terms of the desire of companies to come together, but also as it is run by them in a B2B situation. Clearly, the ICP model is going to be duplicated or copied and used by other companies around the world. It is one of the interesting trends that is emerging globally in executive education and development."

True, this consortium does have similarities with those run by some of the leading business schools. These include senior executive participation and learning methodology, where companies sought to resolve specific issues at the end of each programme. The difference at ICP came in the coursecontent — chosen on the basis of topics tailored to suit specific needs of the participating companies.

According to Mr Pradhan, the endgame was in synthesising collective learning quotient from each programme and adding to it an outsider perspective in terms of `other company views and solutions to similar problems'. During the Mumbai leg, ICP members got a taste of how business is run in India — an emerging market perspective.

Thus, ICP allows one to address challenges that large MNCs face in an increasingly globalised economy, by taking a deep dive into the way business operates in various parts of the world. Therefore, when the ICP had its teaching module at Boston, the participants got to see how business was business was transacted in North America. On the flip side, one also got to share time with some of the leading edge thinkers from institutions such as MIT and Harvard.

Surely, if the take-home from the past nine ICP modules were to be quantified, there would be a massive value build-up for each of the participating companies. There is no arguing the fact that ICP is navigating fresh water. But considering the incredible business diversity and structured innovation that has already accrued from its learning modules, the future can only be exciting as more companies seem set to join the voyage.

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