The detailed write-up of the UNICON Team Development Conference 2024 (TDC 2024) at Nova School of Business and Economics is now available, thanks to the IEDP team.
This comprehensive resource is invaluable for those who attended and wish to recap and share key learnings with colleagues. It is equally beneficial for those who couldn’t make it and want to dive into the transformative discussions and findings from this year’s conference.
Key insights and trends
This document includes key insights and session highlights, summarizing each day’s activities.
Here are some key insights and stats from the report:
UNICON Benchmarking Survey 2024
UNICON’s annual benchmarking report is a ‘must have’ piece of industry research for business school-based executive education professionals, building on decades of experience from our Benchmarking Committee and Percept Research.
Findings, insights and trends from this year’s report were presented in an interactive session using Mentimeter to poll the room, quiz participants against the data, and enable live feedback and suggestions for future years.
Highlights include:
- Average gross annual revenue has more than doubled since 2020-21, signaling a full recovery post-pandemic.
- There has been a dramatic shift back to face-to-face programmes, driven by demand for networking, human connection, and peer learning
- Significant gaps were identified between client and school perceptions of top qualities in learning partners, particularly in faculty expertise and scalability of talent development solutions.
- Live audience feedback confirmed this finding and cited various factors including: networking; Zoom fatigue; human connection and interaction; community; better outcomes; remote workers wanting learning to be in-person; and peer learning.
Please note that the prime representatives from the schools who participate in the study receive the report.
The study fields comparative research of providers across the globe, inviting executive education leaders to explore the data and, learn, compare, and decide.
Days 1 and 2: Round-Up
The future of lifelong ExecEd: Carrington Crisp report
Now in its second iteration, CarringtonCrisp’s Future of Lifelong Executive Education report has evolved, having initially been conducted in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and focusing on trends in online learning. Conducted through surveys of 1,100 employers across 32 countries and nearly 10,000 learners from 40+ countries, this year’s report explores how employers and individual learners are adapting to continually changing skill demands and the increasing role of flexible, non-degree-based education.
Day 3: Round-Up
Watch Day 3 Round-Up video with participant testimonials on UNICON’s LinkedIn page.
Key Conference Themes
This year’s Team Development Conference challenged attendees to engage with a ‘hallucinated world.’ This meant confronting tough questions around how to deal with fragmented realities and sometimes unreliable AI outputs—but it also meant opening one’s mind to unconventional problem-solving and innovative thinking.
#1 Don’t run from complexity
The idea that as well as asking the daring questions, today’s leaders must realize now is the time for daring solutions.
A new generation of AI-enabled technologies provides the tools to design these solutions.
‘Acknowledge the complexity, and wade in.’
#2 Exec-Ed’s role in the AI boom
Executive education can be ‘an installer of calm and thought’ on AI, as well as providing the skills and expertise to challenge the assumptions built into large-language models, and question the outputs they give us, enabling leaders to assess them with human skills of discernment, critical thinking, and prioritization.
#3 Live experiences in change management
A change management simulator that ‘forced out natural behaviors’ to reveal powerful insights showed that for some topics, there is no substitute for experiencing the reality of the challenge live and in-person.
#4 How can we mesh-up with our clients and understand their needs?
Over multiple panels, workshops, and research presentations, the conference saw a strong drive to learn from executive education’s clients, to understand and anticipate their needs and design human-centered products to meet them where they are.
#5 Help us prepare people for change
A recurring message from corporate clients: in the face of change and transformation, automation and AI, many skillsets are becoming redundant. This poses huge societal as well as organizational challenges—which executive education providers are well-placed to help solve.
#6 Power of collective intelligence
The tools and methodologies available to harness and synthesize the collective intelligence of large and diverse voices has never been greater.
#7 Living in the future
From a Masters student’s perspective that, “10-15 years from now we won’t be looking for knowledge per se, but how to identify the right problems to solve,” to considering the impact of a ’20 year longevity bonus’ on the global workforce, the conference successfully enabled attendees to ‘live in the future’ for three days, and think innovatively as a result.
#8 Respect for difference
Hosted by a school steeped in internationalism, with attendees arriving from all corners of the world to collaborate together, many of the topics covered, from peace to inclusion to leadership, depend on respect for one another’s differences.
Keep the Conversation Alive
📢 Share insights and reflections using #UNICONTDC on social media.
💡 Share your Conference insights in the comments section below!
🌐 Discover more on UNICON’s LinkedIn page
See you at the next UNICON event!
