ESMT cooperating with Rotterdam

The cooperation is a natural fit for the two schools given their strong client bases in adjacent markets, comments Olaf Ploetner, Managing Director of ESMT Customized Solutions, and George Yip, Dean of RSM in a press release from the Dutch school. Their first cooperation will be in consortium programs that bring together leading German and Dutch companies in the energy and technology sectors. Such consortium programs in which several companies send their employees to the joint course are a hybrid of programs open to all companies and ones that are custom-tailored to the needs of a company.

The cooperation is definitely a smart move for the RSM. The renowned business school is currently suffering significantly from the decrease in the executive education field and has been trying for quite some time now to gain a foothold in Germany with company specific executive education courses.
       
The cooperation is an unusual step for the ESMT since the Berlin school has always rejected cooperation offers with foreign business schools up until now. Plus, company specific executive education programs are an area in which the ESMT has acted the most successfully to this point.   

The cooperation is said to be established via former RSM employees who now work at the ESMT. Insiders suggest this might just be the prelude to further cooperation in the area of MBA programs. Here the ESMT, whose own MBA programs have been dragged slowly along, can profit from the RSM’s good reputation. But joint MBA programs with the Berlin school, which is significantly weaker and currently widely unknown on an international level, would be a risky strategy for the internationally-renowned top school.

www.rsm.nl