MeansBusiness and Duke Corporate Education to Integrate Largest Database of Business Ideas Into Custom Corporate Education

Business Wire, Dec 18, 2000

Business/Technology Editors

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 18, 2000

MeansBusiness, Inc., a company with the largest and fastest-growing database of expert business ideas in the world, today announced a partnership with Duke Corporate Education Inc., the for-profit company formed in July by Duke University's Fuqua School of Business.

The new partnership will allow Duke Corporate Education to incorporate MeansBusiness' vast array of more than 15,000 business ideas into its customized education programs. "Time to market is just as critical for corporate learning as it is for products," said Blair H. Sheppard, CEO of Duke Corporate Education. "It takes years for the latest thinking to migrate into off-the-shelf courses. The partnership with MeansBusiness accelerates access to `best of breed' ideas and enhances our ability to customize leading-edge solutions, giving Duke Corporate Education clients a significant learning advantage."

MeansBusiness, Inc. is the first company to focus on aggregating the critical ideas and business knowledge from leading experts to streamline business learning. Through long-term license agreements with leading publishers, MeansBusiness editors review over a hundred books each month, select verbatim the best business ideas and present them in short learning segments.

"The rate at which new business concepts and models are developing is unprecedented," said David Wilcox, CEO of MeansBusiness. "What business leaders need is not more technology but sound business thinking on how to find and leverage the innovative ideas that are constantly flowing from leading experts and entrepreneurs. Duke Corporate Education and MeansBusiness are committed to making that flow of innovative ideas easily accessible to each client."

Duke Corporate Education's custom programs and advisory services are based on tailored solutions developed by teams of academic and business experts. MeansBusiness experts will join Duke's program development teams to ensure that the most targeted MeansBusiness concepts are delivered to each client. Each focused concept in the continually updated database requires only minutes of time to read. The key concepts from an entire book can be reviewed in an hour. Each person using MeansBusiness can select the learning segments that meet their specific challenges, resulting in increased customized learning.

About Duke Corporate Education

Duke Corporate Education, Inc. (www.DukeCE.com) was formed by Duke University and Duke's Fuqua School of Business in July of 2000 to provide management education and educational services to corporations. Drawing on years of experience in business practice and academia, Duke Corporate Education delivers custom educational services that link corporate learning to business strategy. The new company includes Fuqua's Custom Executive Education group, consistently ranked as one of the top custom executive education providers in the world. The Fuqua School of Business and Duke Corporate Education are recognized leaders in place and space education, the combination of face to face learning and e-learning.

About MeansBusiness

MeansBusiness, Inc. is the first company to focus on bringing together the critical ideas and business knowledge from published books and articles to foster learning on demand. MeansBusiness is the largest source of business concepts in the world. With more than 15,000 ideas and 2,000 new ideas added monthly, MeansBusiness has developed the first systematic way to monitor and leverage the ever-changing tide of business innovation. MeansBusiness was awarded a Forbes magazine "Best of the Web" designation in Education/Corporate Training and was included in KMWorld Magazine's "100 Companies Who Matter in KM." For more information on MeansBusiness, visit their web site at www.meansbusiness.com.