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Attention is focused on key management trends and predictions. A concise overview of the literature as well as comments generated from the Delphi panel are presented enabling the reader to make his/her own judgement about some key statements concerning the future of management development.

This article provides a typology of organizational learning styles, examines how organizations really learn, offers a diagnostic managers can use on their own businesses, and presents a new learning model that promotes organizational change.

In the current stressful recessionary period, the need for highly effective managers who can skillfully direct bet‐the‐company strategic initiatives such as disruptive innovation, restructuring, strategic renewal and mergers greatly increases. It more important than ever to study the succession planning and leadership training of best‐practice firms to learn better ways to develop high potential leaders. This paper aims to investigate this issue.

The paper offers a summary of some of these best practices and provides case examples of successful applications.

The paper finds that employees with high leadership potential need to be systematically identified and tracked by line managers as part of an overall strategic succession planning process. Success in developing the next generation of leaders requires creating a talent management system in which selection, development, performance management, succession and career management are aligned, reviewed and supported by senior management.

Some of the more cost‐ and resource‐efficient practices for implementing a successful early‐stage high‐potential program include: a special learning and development track for the high potentials; rotation of managers across disciplines‐divisions‐geographies; technology‐based learning; action learning; and coaching/mentoring (internal and external) programs.

To ensure that the talent pool supports the company's overall strategy, the abilities of the high potential individuals should be shaped to correspond with the emerging leadership needs of the next decade. The “best firms for leaders” are typically twice as likely to use a variety of developmental techniques for their “best and brightest.”

Organizations have been seeking new ways to satisfy the requirement for continuous learning. It is argued that a blend of on‐the‐job education, skill development and action learning will be required to fuse individual development with corporate development. Some corporations are adopting corporate universities to ensure that education is relevant and to help them become learning organizations. The development of such institutions is considered and a number are described.

If this is the “Age of the Learning Organization,” surely creating leaders who can build learning‐oriented competitive advantage should be a big business. Nohria and Berkley of the Harvard Business School have estimated that corporate expenditures for training have grown from $10 billion to $45 billion during the past decade. Business Week estimates that approximately $12 billion of this amount was devoted to executive education. The growth in expenditures for executive programs is a result of the increasing recognition that education and leadership development are powerful levers in communicating and implementing key strategic initiatives.

Describes the techniques of customer surveys, derived forecasts, causal models, time series analysis, Delphi forecasting, scenario analysis, content analysis, impact analysis, groupware, and micro world/computer simulations.

Discusses “organizational learning”, and the contribution of simulations and system dynamics to the improvement of managers′ “mental worlds” in accelerating anticipatory learning.

Describes the two‐core management development programmes. Featuring internationally known business school faculty and consultants the first core stressed global strategic thinking: achieving world class excellence. Describes the integration of the International Division corporate strategy. Concludes that the key lessons include leadership, informed planning and eventual in‐house ownership of the programmes.

Fundamental changes in the business environment dramatically accentuate the importance of corporate learning. Learning as a competive advantage requires organizations to adopt a new view of education for general management. The new paradigm focuses on anticipatory learning rather than maintenance learning. The leadership/ management development process will be viewed as a system rather than a series of discrete events. Identifies and discusses several trends for both providers and users of management development services, along with the need for policy level support for these efforts.

Identifies and discusses nine issues the author believes will dominate management development programmes in the immediate future: learning (including “maintenance learning”, “shock learning” and “anticipatory learning”); the power of teams; time as a competitive weapon; dramatic leadership; globalization and transnationalization; flexibility and resilience; customer responsiveness, service or quality; technology and information systems; and systems thinking. Concludes by pointing out that while these themes should not be included in management development programmes simply because they are popular, few become popular without meeting an important need.