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| Sheikh Abdulla bin Ali al-Thani and Khaled el-Gohary during a press conference |
The latest module, designed and delivered by Harvard Business School (HBS), is entitled Strategy, Leadership and Innovation. The participating candidates, selected for the programme following a rigorous selection process, explored a range of critical leadership themes including corporate strategy, organisational effectiveness and competitive analysis from the vantage of a selection of contemporary
case studies.
“QLC is committed to bringing the best thinkers and teachers to support us in our mission to enhance Qatar’s leadership potential, and Harvard Business School’s welcome contribution is a testament to that fact,” commented Sheikh Abdulla bin Ali al-Thani, QLC’s executive director and board member.
The five-day session, the first half of the HBS offering, ran during the course of the past week, and was led by three leading academics from Harvard Business School: David Ager, Linda A Hill and John R Wells.
Content for the course focused on the close examination of key case studies on competitive advantage, organisational effectiveness, sustaining competitive advantage and high performance organisations. A different HBS faculty team will return to Doha in March to complete the HBS component.
Khaled el-Gohary, director of strategy and performance QLC, praised the current group of participants.
He said: “We have been very impressed by the intelligence, aptitude and dedication demonstrated by our first class of QLC students over the course of this module.
“Having been chosen on merit following a demanding selection process, these promising leaders are firmly on track to becoming a valuable resource for Qatar’s future and we very much look forward to monitoring their success over the course of the coming year.”
Commenting on behalf of the HBS visiting faculty, Larry Murphy, managing director of HBS Executive Education Custom Programmes, said: “It has been a pleasure for us to work with QLC here in Doha and see first-hand the enthusiasm embodied by its candidates and management. It is clear that there are a number of unique opportunities and challenges facing Qatar today, and we hope that we have been able to make a valuable contribution to the development of its current and future leaders.”
David Ager is a Lecturer in Sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University, and a faculty member in executive education programmes at both Harvard Business School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. His research focuses on the leadership and organisational challenges that firms face as they conduct post-acquisition integration.
Linda A Hill is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and the Faculty Chair of the Leadership Initiative. She is a former Faculty Chair of the Organisational Behaviour unit at Harvard Business School, and she was course head during the development of the new Leadership and Organisational Behaviour MBA required course.
John R Wells is a Professor of Management Practice in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School where he teaches the first year core course in strategy, as well as his own second year elective course on strategic agility. An Oxford University graduate, Wells has worked with numerous high-profile companies as well as setting up a number of companies himself.
