“AA Vodafone Roadwatch is the first in a series of new traffic monitoring and navigational products,” Mr Marsh says.Last November, the AA and Vodafone struck a multi-million pound, six- year alliance to develop new systems including computerised vehicle guidance products, early alert systems based on live information to warn of vehicle hazards or congestion and in-car mapping systems.It is an area in which the RAC is already competing. “We are involved in working with Ford on their navigational systems development,” Mr Brill says “The key is real-time systems And that’s where the broadcast traffic news fits in. With car radios able to automatically switch stations to catch the latest traffic reports, who’s delivering the news – and how – has an impact.”. BUSINESS SCHOOLS in the US traditionally have not been noted for their internationalism. However, times are changing: the schools are attracting more overseas students, and American participants are looking increasingly likely to take advantage of international options.

Nor is it just the MBA programmes that are heading in a direction travelled long ago by the European schools – especially the British ones. Executive courses are also taking on an international flavour.
A couple of years ago, Chicago’s Graduate School of Business launched a scheme under which its faculty would travel to Barcelona to teach managers from European companies for part of the year.Now, its neighbour, the J L Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, believes it is going further by setting up joint ventures with established schools in certain territories. It has, for instance, already helped set up a school in Bangkok.Building on alliances designed to supply joint MBA programmes, it is launching an executive programme with the IAE Aix-en-Provence business school in France. It is, says the school, a recognition of the rapid globalisation of industry in recent years.Kellogg – which, although it is little known in Britain, has been consistently among the top-ranked American business schools – says it is aiming the programme at European managers with a minimum of 10 years’ work experience.The course is due to start next January, and Kellogg says it expects participants to have an average age of 38 to 39. This is much the same as those who go through its hugely successful executive management programme at the purpose-built James L Allen Center on its Evanston campus, on the outskirts of Chicago.In particular, Kellogg believes that the course will appeal to managers who are earmarked to move into an international senior management position within three to four years.

It is designed to help companies equip such managers for the challenges awaiting them in these roles, and is not, it adds emphatically, “for young professionals at the beginning of their careers or in their second jobs”.The two-year, part-time programme will take place at three locations. All four of the residential weeks in the first year and three of the four in the second will be held at IAE’s base in Aix-en-Provence, under the direction of Olivier Tabatoni, associate dean and professor of finance.The final residential week will be spent at Kellogg’s James L Allen Center, under the charge of Ed Wilson, associate dean of master’s degree programmes, while weekend sessions will be organised by Sybren Tijmstra, IAE’s professor of international management, in Brussels.The total fees of $48,000 (pounds 31,170) include everything except travel to and from the programme sites. Not surprisingly, therefore, the organisers say all participants will be sponsored. Donald Jacobs, Kellogg’s longstanding dean, envisages the majority being backed by large companies, and just a few being self-funded individual entrepreneurs.The publicity for the programme bills it as “the best of both worlds” – a notion backed up by the histories of the two establishments involved.

As befits its lofty ranking, Kellogg is one of the most sought-after American business schools. The Allen Center, which is booked up for the whole of this year and next, has 6,000 applicants for the 590 places on its MBA programme.IAE, on the other hand, is the oldest business school in France and was the first in the French university system to offer a doctor of management course.There are personal reasons for the involvement of the two organisations. IAE was founded by Tabatoni’s father, Pierre, who is an old colleague of Dean Jacobs. “He’s going to teach again, so there’s a lot of nostalgia for us,” Dean Jacobs said.. THE ROYAL British Legion is privatising part of its activities in an effort to boost funds from poppy sales.

The charity will soon announce the formation of a company that will pitch into the competitive world of corporate training. Although charities are not normally allowed to make profits, the Legion has been given special dispensation by the Charity Commissioners to act as a commercial company. Any surpluses will be used to cross-subsidise its other activities, which normally rely on money from poppy sales.
Receipts from Poppy Day have held up well but, charity experts say, they are expected to start dropping soon. At the same time, demand for funds is rising as ageing Second World War veterans need extra help. Last week the legion announced it was merging three factories, including the one that makes poppies, in an effort to cut costs.The legion has had a training organisation for 15 years – it retrains former service personnel and prepares those about to leave the military. This has intensified since the end of the Cold War and in 1994 it opened a pounds 4.7m training centre in Tidworth on Salisbury Plain – the EU paid pounds 1.4m towards this.But redundancies from the cuts in defence spending will dry up next year. Having risen from 12,000 a year to 30,000 at the peak, the outflow will fall to 9,000 by 1997.