Baku, April 25, AZERTAC

BP and its co-venturers in the Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli, Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, Shah Deniz, and South Caucasus Pipeline projects - SOCAR, TPAO, PETRONAS, Chevron, LUKOIL, NICO, Equinor, INPEX, ExxonMobil, SGC, ITOCHU, ONGC, TOTAL, Eni - today announced their new social investment initiative in support of transfer of international business education expertise to Azerbaijan. The project is designed to help meet the current market demand in executive education and challenges faced by local organizations in this area.

The project will bring the internationally-recognised Adaptive Strategic Execution Programme to Azerbaijan, basing it at Baku’s ADA University. The training programme of the project is certified by the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University (USA). It will be based on a world-class business education curriculum developed by Duke Corporate Education (Duke CE), a leader in providing executive education globally, in partnership with TwentyEighty Strategy Execution.

The new Adaptive Strategic Execution Programme will be the first in the country to help organizations ensure that they have the capacity to adapt quickly in times of uncertainty and change in order to continue to focus on their vision and strategic goals, to remain competitive and successful.

The project will be implemented by TwentyEighty Strategy Execution - an international education provider based in the US, in partnership with ADA University. It is intended that the project will continue BP and co-venturers’ international educational expertise transfer model. This includes an initial partnership with an international implementing partner with the aim to create a fully localized programme in the long term. One of the goals set for the project is to train local instructors to deliver the programme under a sustainable model and to ensure its continued success after the initial period of funding from BP and co-venturers.

Bakhtiyar Aslanbayli, BP’s vice president, communications, external affairs, strategy and region, said: “Our experience shows that the business world continuously changes and there’s always a need for organisations to respond to external changes quickly. A major part of this is the ability of business executives to constantly assess the context in which they operate and respond with agility and flexibility. In this way they can maintain their competitive advantage and ensure successful outcomes of their plans and strategies. We expect this new business executive education programme to provide the transformational behaviours, the skillsets and mind-sets required to be successful in the changing business environment. This is what the programme will help build in the country and we are pleased to bring two leading universities - ADA University and Duke University, together to create this capacity locally.”

Fariz Ismayilzade, executive vice rector of ADA University, said: “We, at ADA University, are very excited about this partnership with BP and its co-venturers and believe that it will provide new tools for our Executive Education programme to engage corporate leaders, teach them new skills, essential in the market and will further cement the leading role of our university in capacity building programmes in Azerbaijan.”

The value of the project is more than $882,000 with the duration of two years. The scope of work includes the delivery of a six-month training programme in six modules to a group of up to 18 participants. Overall six streams are planned within the duration of the project covering a total of up to 108 students. Successful participants will receive a certificate from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. The project also includes BP and co-venturers’ support for participants’ tuition fee payment.