Celebrating 20 years of CarringtonCrisp

Twenty years of CarringtonCrisp has many memories.  It all started on 14 November 2003 when Mary Lou Carrington and I spoke at what was then the Association of Business Schools conference for marketing and PR professionals.  However, it was a bit of a false start as the next day I got married and headed off on honeymoon for two weeks.

The real starting point was our first group research study, The Business of Branding, which 33 UK business schools took part in.  A couple of years later, CarringtonCrisp became an international business, partnering with EFMD on our second annual study, GenerationWeb.  That relationship with EFMD remains to this day with CarringtonCrisp and EFMD jointly publishing five market insight reports each year, providing key market insights for close to 200 schools over the last 20 years.

At about the same time, the business ran its first consulting assignment, working with INSEAD, who had just launched their new positioning with ‘The business school for the world’.  And this was the starting point of our international consulting journey.

A few years later we had our first client in Australia, the University of Queensland Business School, which was quickly followed by UNSW.  Today we’ve worked with more than half the business schools in Australia.  At about the same time, Babson College became our first client in the USA, and we’ve now worked in around 40 countries as diverse as China, Lebanon, South Africa and Colombia.

Our ongoing partnership with EFMD has been a model for other relationships, notably that with LinkedIn, who we have now conducted several research projects with in recent years.  Partnerships have become part of our life blood, conducting studies with organisations such as the Executive MBA Council and CEEMAN, while working with GBSN, AAPBS, WiBE and many more.

Of course, none of this has been done alone.  Without the help of some great colleagues, it wouldn’t have been possible to deliver such wonderful work.  I am especially grateful to Mary Lou Carrington for having the confidence in me to start our business and to Matthew Carrington for his on-going support.  Our team today includes colleagues from Cornwall, Portugal, Spain and India, providing a platform to extend our support to business and higher education around the world.

And to all those clients that we’ve supported to date – thank you.  Thank you for your patience, your projects and your partnership.  It has been a pleasure to work with you, providing insights and support to enhance the learning experience, the alumni relationships, the strategies, the brands, the programme portfolios and so much more at your schools.

Twenty years of CarringtonCrisp is something worth celebrating.  Yet in celebrating the past, we’re keen to see the future.  So much is changing in business education today.  To mark 20 years of working with the world’s leading business schools, we’re asking a range of people, some in business education, others not, to write about the future.

The first article is from John Quelch, recently retired as the Dean of the Miami Herbert Business School, and someone I first worked with when he was Dean of London Business School from 1998-2001.  You can read his thoughts about the threats to teaching in business schools on our website.  Do look out for other articles over the next 12 months and if you would like to contribute, please get in touch.

Twenty years ago in the kitchen at Mary Lou’s home in London, CarringtonCrisp was born.  We both felt we had something to offer business schools as they sought to grow their reputation.  As we head towards our third decade as a business, there’s still so much more to offer.