In recent years, GE has faced severe business challenges -- the company's $200 billion market cap is half of what it used to be. Still, an area of enormous strength is the way the company identifies and builds leaders. Much of the credit goes to GE's corporate learning programs, executed through a learning facility in Crotonville, N.Y. As business becomes more global, how is leadership development at GE changing? How does GE use technology to teach leadership? What impact will the influx of the Facebook generation have on the way leadership is taught? Susan Peters -- GE's chief learning officer and vice president for executive development -- discussed these questions and more with Knowledge@Wharton.

Although becoming a leader may seem simple, the fact is that there's a lot of consideration that goes into management. You not only have to stay on top of your team, but make sure that you're fostering communication, growth and productivity. Here, we'll take a look at a number of high quality courses that will show you how to take care of these issues and more.

Getting a business education doesn't have to be expensive. An increasing number of colleges, universities and even nonprofit organizations offer free business courses online. Find out how you can sign up for these courses and what you can get from them.

Free textbooks are a great way to get a free education. This article tells you where you can get all sorts of free textbooks online, including free accounting textbooks, economics textbooks, computer science and technology textbooks, English textbooks, history textbooks and science textbooks.

Some of the top colleges and universities in the world provide free business administration courses online. Here is a list of the best sources.

Managers want the status of professionals, but not all managers want the constraints that go along with professions. Why? For more than 100 years, business education at the top universities has been searching for its soul. HBS professor Rakesh Khurana, author of a new book, says business school education is at a turning point.

Seth Godin blogs about whether business books work or are they an utter waste of time.

Editor's Note: the blog post itself is fine, but if the topic interests you will will find quite a number of related trackback posts to further your reading...

The notion of different types of learners and learning styles usually refer to "auditory," "visual" and "verbal." While these distinctions are valid, there is a different way to think about this: in terms of how people think about their goals.

Training new supervisors has a positive effect on all of the supervisor's staff and produces more results than the supervisor was able to accomplish as an individual performer. While many companies offer some sort of management training, often it's ineffective. But by adjusting when the training is conducted, what is included and who conducts it, you can make big differences in the effectiveness of your managers.

Note: TWM articles ARE still available BUT: (1) you must be a member (free for existing members, not free for new members)   (2) you must be logged-in for the link to work. If you get an error page, visit the homepage, login and then try the link again.

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While the notion that people learn differently is hardly new, it has been David A. Kolb, Professor of Organisational Behaviour at the Weatherhead School of Management, who has encapsulated the idea in recent years. Initially on his own and then working with Roger Fry, Kolb put forward a cycle of learning. This article, which serves as an introduction to theworkingmanager.com website offers a nice overview of Kolb's work and the connections between personality types and learning styles.

Tom Kelly is using the Web to reinvent training inside the world's most Internet-centric big company. Here's what he's learned about e-learning -- and how it's changing the style and the substance of training at Cisco Systems.

Creating student interest is an important, sometimes difficult, task facing all instructors. One way to stimulate students' interest is through the use of examples that are interesting and relevant to the students. As the most popular sport in the United States, football provides numerous opportunities for presenting potentially dry, intimidating, academic financial concepts in terms that undergraduate students may find more relevant, understandable, and interesting. In this paper, the author provides football examples to demonstrate various financial topics. These include: using time value of money techniques to examine player contracts; the similarities between specialists and sportsbooks (bookies); bondholder-shareholder conflicts and Hail Mary passes; how IPOs and ticket scalping are similar; gambling and the various forms of market efficiency; real options; and long-term contracts.

Note: CEO Refresher articles are no longer free...

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To help your facilitators do a better job - and better ensure the overall success of your conferences - consider passing along these basic, but vitally important, recommendations.

Editor's Note: some of these recommendations are useful for any kind of instruction or presentation

University executive-education programs tackle one of the business world's toughest jobs: teaching M&A.

Note: Older EBF articles are not currently online. I'm not sure if this is temporary or permanent. If you click you will be taken to the Archive.org site to find an archived copy.

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"Our line-up of essayists is, we believe, as distinguished as ever. It starts with two eminent deans - John Quelch (formerly of London Business School, now back at Harvard) and Xavier Gilbert and Peter Lorange of IMD. Both naturally promote the virtues of management education - Quelch praising the achievements of the MBA, notably in the United States, Lorange and Gilbert explaining how to make the ‘learning' experience as relevant and effective as possible. Transatlantic differences surface in the Quelch thesis but it is Peter Hagström from the Stockholm School of Economics (CEMS) who sets out to distinguish the Anglo-Saxon model from its European (notably Scandinavian) variants. Then comes an interesting debate on the pros, cons and possibilities of measuring the impact of executive education - a highly sceptical view from Adrian Furnham,a Psychology Professor at University College, London, coupled with an analysis by Cranfield's Liz Bridge and Andrew Myers of attempts so far. Kelvin Hard of PricewaterhouseCoopers argues that personal and inter-personal skills can be improved by training - with a clear impact on performance - followed by IBM's Manfred Schnabel putting the case for corporate universities. Two business executives responsible for learning and development in their companies - Knut Asebo of Norsk Hydro and Tony Russell of L'Oréal - describe how they seek to maintain relevance and commercial focus while Insead Professor Gareth Jones' mix of sceptisim and exuberant enthusiasm will provoke boardroom thought. In addition, Tim Dickson, EBF executive Editor has written an acerbic critique on business school rankings. Finally, EBF conducted an online poll and held an executive workshop. Go to 'Have your say' section in the website to view comments."

Editor's Note: A follow-up to this debate has been published at:
http://www.ebfonline.com/at_forum/at_forum.asp?id=285

Note: CEO Refresher articles are no longer free...

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Most organizations use their training investments about as strategically as they deploy their office supplies spending. And the impact on customer satisfaction, cost containment or quality improvement is just as useless.

Note: CEO Refresher articles are no longer free...

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Many companies are feeling the pressure to employ technology-based training solutions instead of continuing their reliance on traditional classroom training. Some have even taken the plunge with pilot projects, producing both favorable and unfavorable results. But before you go wading into the pricey waters of technology-based training, take the time to look at why many professionals feel it will vastly improve and enhance your training efforts. Instructional multimedia, the kind of training delivered over the computer, has some major differences and some powerful benefits over classroom training. The two current front-runners, CD-ROM and Web-based training (WBT) have many similarities, but some vastly different capabilities that may require some trade-offs on your part.

Note: CEO Refresher articles are no longer free...

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So you've made the decision to use multimedia as part of your overall training strategy. You can take the low cost route and purchase generic off-the-shelf products, or you can expend more of your training budget on your own development. But do you know how to tell the difference between high quality multimedia and multimedia that is substandard (it may do the job but not as well)?

E-learning systems may not be easy to implement, but many companies see the potential for a broad business impact.

Article discusses how top business schools are integrating e-commerce topics into their courses in a scramble to keep up with Internet time, with Stanford and Michigan's MBA programs highlighted.

Professors at Chicago-area business schools were interviewed about new-economy education and identified four key trends

If you'd like a look at the short-term direction of the training industry, consider these 12 trends described by Gartner. The trends fall into two categories--technology and management--and cover everything from knowledge management to bigger budgets.

They define trends and influence titans, but do you know how to tell great literature from company-crashing schlock? Here are some old rules for understanding the new economy. Also includes a 'Top-10' list of books to read.

Companies need new techniques to train their professionals for the challenges of the 21st century. It takes more than schoolwork.

7 leaders from class of '99 offer insights