Yes, of course, it makes sense! EFMD is looking for strong partnerships that develop, implement, and run (a) L&D initiative(s) together. In the areas of executive development, professional development, talent development, and organisational development, the partnership should demonstrate how the corporate strategic goals and the aims and objectives of the L&D intervention were achieved. Please make sure that you meet the recommendations of the “Assignment Brief,” particularly “The Challenge” and “The Impact.”

Unfortunately, EFMD will not accept the resubmission of a case study by the same partnership. However, it might be that both partner organisations have worked together on another L&D project or that the L&D provider has changed. In these cases, EFMD would accept a new submission.

Indications of impact are always related to the challenge initially tackled :

• The strongest indicators are “business indicators”, both financial or commercial ones: was there an impact on the business results of the company/department, such as growth in sales, profitability, market share, competitive positioning? Product & service portfolio: Very few L&D interventions start with problem statements that explicitly mention improvement targets in financial and commercial terms, but those that do can have very strong impact cases. Examples can be the sales volume of a group of salespeople who went through consultative selling training, the proportion of new products, including new technologies, following an internal re-skilling project, etc.
• Most indicators, however, are more of a “leading indicator” type, typically referring to the internal organisation of the company and the capabilities of its people. Good examples of these are efficiency and effectiveness improvements such as reduced time-to-market of solutions following the introduction of a new process/methodology, but also competency/capability indicators such as the number of accredited project managers. Talent pipeline indicators, replacement ratio’s, employee turnover, productivity or morale improvements are other examples at people level.


  In general, leading indicators are the easiest to find/define and typically also the level of initial diagnosis and analysis. Putting “The Challenge” in a wider business context is essential for impact assessment, so adding a lagging business indicator should always be attempted. (The eventual financial/commercial impact targeted through an organisational/people impact).

No, you don’t need to define the category explicitly. Upon receipt of all papers, EFMD will split them into sub-groups, based on the categories described below. The description of your Executive Summary and the Business Challenge will, of course, help EFMD to classify your case study.

• Leadership/Executive Development: The main challenges addressed in these cases are around developing incumbent leaders and managers. The programmes can be recurrent ones for a specific cohort of managers/leaders or in a limited series addressing challenges of changing leadership styles, internationalisation, and the like.
• Talent Development: The main challenges addressed in these cases are around identifying and developing future leaders and managers. Selecting and preparing talent to be ready to take on a new (and changing) role within the company. The focus is on talent pipeline and leadership bench strength.
• Professional Development: The challenges addressed in these cases are around professionalising specific functions, particularly (new) competencies required in these functions. The case study can cover functions such as: Marketing & Sales, Internal Services e.g. IT or Quality Control & Business Improvement or Operations such as product development etc…
• Organisation Development: The challenges in these cases are around culture changes, post-mergers & acquisition integrations, transformation processes entering new markets or challenges in the product/service portfolio. Typically the interventions are not in a programme format, but rather facilitated large group interventions.
• Special Cases: In this category, the jury evaluates L&D initiatives, which can cover elements of categories 1-4 but mainly follow a different objective. (e.g. social and environmental impact, ecosystem development ...)

For copyright reasons, a reference list should be attached if you use direct quotes (ideas & theories) from an author in your case study. The list should then contain the author’s name, year and the article or passage of a book you got it from. If you have done up-front research and background reading in order to develop, design or structure the programme better, then these authors & books should appear in the bibliography. Or if you want to provide the reader with some more background reading, then you may put these books in there as well. References are compulsory in the case mentioned above, whereas the bibliography is not obligatory.

EFMD is fixing the maximum word count at 4.000 words.

This word count will comprise all text from the full case, including title page, content page, executive summary, introduction, main body & conclusions.

NOT calculated in this word count: appendices, bibliography & references, key to abbreviations, footnotes & endnotes, and text in diagrams (as far as the quantity of text remains reasonable).

Each jury member will have to read a dozen papers, which is quite a demanding task. Therefore, we recommend making their lives easier by providing videos.

Please include a URL link in your PDF submission, clearly indicating that this link allows you to access a video.

Keep the film short, and use a video format that can be read on any platform without specific technical requirements.

EFMD will make sure jury members have access to all the different documents. However, we may not guarantee that the jury will be reading all appendices or watching all videos! Please don’t overload your case!

Yes, EFMD will accept entries anywhere in the world within the 24-hour timeframe. EFMD will acknowledge receipt of all papers on the following day!

No, there is no need to send in a PowerPoint presentation. This will only be required in case your organisation is selected as a winning team and invited to make a presentation at an EFMD event.

Yes, of course. From 2015 onwards, the winning cases of previous years are all available on our EFMD “Excellence in Practice” webpages.