Wednesday, 14 August 2024, was remarkable for Business School Netherlands Nigeria stakeholders.

• It was the last day of the viva dissertation defence for the MBA class 2024 before the faculty and principals from Buren, Netherlands. Sixty-seven of them would be glad they scaled all hurdles.
• BSNN clocked 20 years in Nigeria.
• Its celebration comes as the mother institution marks 35 years as a globally accredited business school with a unique pedagogy based on Action Learning.
  I ran into BSNN CEO Prof Lere Baale with BSN International Director Juanita Bouwer, the Registrar Yvette Baker and Cohort Set Advisor Yinka Folami. They excitedly took photos with some students.
  Lere Baale: “We produced the first graduate in 2008, although we started classes in 2004.”

My agency, Blueflower Limited, served as communication counsel for Business School Netherlands for some years.

A USP of Business School Netherlands is that it attracts students on a fast career track who come to apply the Action Learning approach to their work and use their organisations as a practical lab and case study for the various modules of the programme. Princess Kelechi Oghene excitedly shared how applying her learning to her businesses upscaled and positively changed their trajectory.

Action Learning is a process that involves a small group working on real problems, acting, and learning as individuals, as a team, and as an organisation. It helps them develop creative, flexible, and successful problem-solving strategies. It requires the participants to act to learn and learn to act.
Action Learning is a well-known and renowned corporate strategy method that produces better insights and dramatically improves decision-making processes.
Action Learning is a learning philosophy that originated in the Chinese Confucius philosophy, the apprenticeship system in ~Africa and robustly developed in the 1940s for application in educational institutions by the European management consultant ad professor Reg Revans (1907-2003). It took shape when Revans brought coal mine managers together in small groups to share experiences and ask each other questions about what they had seen and heard. Because of that, productivity increased by 30%. In the following decades, he further developed his insights into a much-praised and applied methodology, which many large organisations across the globe use.
Samsung, General Electric, Heineken, and Boeing use Action Learning to solve complex issues and increase their organisations’ learning capacities.
The fresh graduates have lived the BSN Nigeria experience and promise to “Keep your job, study at your pace, and Graduate in the Netherlands”.

Words courtesy Chido Nwakanma. Photographs courtesy of Chido Nwakanma. Chido Nwakanma is a Public Relations Consultant and the Managing Director of Blueflower Limited, Lagos. Chido Nwakanma lives in Lagos.