Corporate universities: fostering innovation and change

In twenty years, corporate universities have changed almost beyond recognition: their vision, their purpose, the way they are organised, and their approches and models are now quite different. The main causes are market globalisation, the internationalisation of companies, economic crises, and technological revolutions.

In this context, concepts such as 'training managers' and 'changing organisations' have new meanings. As a result, corporate universities not only have to move with the times; they have to keep one step ahead of future transformations.

Creating a corporate university almost always responds to a combination of the five needs listed below, each of which can change over time:

Deployment and strategic alignment
Leadership and skills development
Boosting the performance of the company or of a Business Unit
HR and organisationsal needs
Corporate Branding

Since the beginning, CrossKnowledge has helped corporate universities in major international groups to roll out their alignment and skills development strategies.

This experience means we can now talk with confidence about the different types of corporate university and the changes that have taken place in this area, particularly as far as the development of new technologies is concerned.

We at CrossKnowledge know that we have to take into account not only the aims, ambitions and constraints of the corporate university, but also key aspects of corporate strategy and culture. This means it is not possible to offer an 'off-the-shelf' university package, even if all our corporate university solutions share similar features in terms of technology, training approach, and change support services.