Leadership Development Program Wins Award

BRUSSELS, October 12, 2011 -

Octagon, a leadership development program at Royal Philips Electronics that sparked innovation won an Excellence in Practice Award today at the European Foundation for Management Development’s (EFMD) Executive Education Meeting in Maastricht. Executive education providers, the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL^®) and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, led Philips’ Octagon development program, which ties business acumen and innovation strategy to behavioral leadership skills.

Octagon is an advanced, accelerated learning experience for managing talent at Philips. It provides participants with a rigorous curriculum to develop their leadership skills. It also requires them to collaborate across functional and geographic boundaries to tackle major business challenges. Octagon has already yielded insights that have helped move the company’s Healthcare, Lighting and Consumer Lifestyle groups into promising new directions of innovation.

“The combination of Wharton and CCL with Philips’ talent management team is a powerhouse, creating a leadership pipeline that continues to deliver value to Philips,” Rudi Plettinx, VP & Managing Director, CCL EMEA, states. “CCL’s contribution focused on developing the ‘how’ of leadership - those essential behavioral qualities that leaders need to apply every day in their dealings with people inside and outside the organization.”

“Wharton’s contribution was on business impact, both for the individual leaders and the organization,” says Jason Wingard, Vice Dean of Executive Education at Wharton.  “Our objective was to prepare Philips’ managers to lead successful innovation projects that would reduce costs or create new revenue streams for Philips.  These managers have generated an excellent return on investment for Philips, creating financial gains that far exceeded the program’s costs.”

EFMD - the Management Development Network - is an international organization with over 750 members from 81 countries, promoting innovation and best practice in management development. EFMD selected Philips’ leadership development program Octagon from 35 entries in the competition as the winning case study in the Talent Management category. Award criteria included sustainable partnership, alignment with corporate strategy, and ROI.

For more information:

Center for Creative Leadership - www.ccl.org

The Wharton School - www.ExecEd.Wharton.UPenn.edu

Center for Creative Leadership, Sandy McLean, smclean at cambre-associates.com, +44-(0)7-786-601-771;
The Wharton School, Eleena De Lisser, execed-pr at wharton.upenn.edu, +1-215-898-7239