Elearnity Viewpoint Paper

The Fall and Rise of Corporate Academies

Cirencester (UK), March 2011 - Corporate academies have been an established trend in enterprise learning for some time. Many organisations are now adopting them as a strategic vehicle to deliver business alignment and more holistic development strategies. However, many others have seen their academies initiatives wither and die.




So, in an age that is increasingly about creating a balance portfolio of work-based, formal, and collaborative learning, and where academies would appear to be the perfect mechanism to enable this, what lessons can be learnt from those successes and failures? What are the critical considerations for corporates that are currently embarking on their journey into the corporate academies landscape?

This Elearnity Viewpoint paper provides a summary view of Elearnity's research into the realities of corporate academies over the last five-plus years. It discusses some of the key trends in corporate academies, and some of the key questions that organisations should be asking about their academy plans.

"Academies may be the perennial flower of organisational learning, but they far from hardy", says David Perring, Elearnity's Director of Research. "From our viewpoint, if they are to flourish and survive, they need to be woven very deeply into the fabric of the business and deliver demonstrable impact. If this is not the case, they can be a very delicate flower, with a very short bloom indeed."