Executive development programs have entered a period of rapid transformation, driven by digital disruption and a widening gap between the skills that participants and their organizations demand and those provided by their executive programs. This work delves into the objective functions of the executive development space, analyzes the demand characteristics of the learners and the organizations that pay for the programs, and the ways in which business schools and other providers deliver (or not) on the promises they make regarding skill development and the continued value of learning to the organization. They show how a trio of disruptive forces (disintermediation, disaggregation and decoupling) which have figured prominently in industries disrupted by digitalization,are reshaping the structure of demand for executive development. The authors look at the future of executive development in the era of self-refining algorithms (aka machine learning) and wearable sensors and computers, and offer a compass for making the right choice for CEOs and CLOs who are guiding executive program design. Ultimately, they offer a guide for to optimize the learning production function for both skill acquisition and skill transfer – the two charges that the new skills economy has laid out for any educational enterprise.

Mihnea C. Moldoveanu is Vice Dean of Learning, Innovation and Executive Development, Professor of Economic Analysis, Marcel Desautels Professor of Integrative Thinking, and Founding Director of the Desautels Centre for Integrative Thinking and the Mind Brain Behavior Institute at the Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto. He is the author of six books, including Inside Man: The Discipline of Modeling Human Ways of Being (SUP, 2011) and The Design of Insight: How to Solve Any Business Problem(SUP, 2015). He is also Founder and past CEO of Redline Communications, Inc. (TSX:RDL), one of the world's leading broadband communications equipment manufacturers.

Das Narayandas is Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, Senior Associate Dean for HBS Publishing, and Senior Associate Dean for External Relations. He has co-authored two books and his numerous articles for Harvard Business Review, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Service Research, and Sloan Management Review.