ISBN: 978-1-60320-978-6

You’re a newly minted CEO with a struggling global company. You make
the tough call to lay off more than 100,000 people while simultaneously
deciding to invest $50 million in an executive education center. Are you
flippin’ nuts? “We were downsizing the company, and I needed a place
where people could congregate and get the message straight from the
horse’s mouth, says Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric. “I
used GE’s Crotonville center as a vehicle to teach where we were going and
why—our corporate values and vision.” The decision was brilliant. GE
is iconic for having an inordinate number of alums in CEO positions at
other companies. Decades later Steve Jobs spent the last two years of his
life essentially perfecting his own version of Crotonville at Apple. The
corporate university model might have been around before Jack Welch,
but he made it vital and sexy.