by Brian Douglass

Created on: August 18, 2008

Around the world, business leaders are recognizing the growing importance of talent management in maintaining a competitive edge in a global market. Tom R. Knighton, partner at Chicago's Oliver Wyman-Delta Executive Learning Center works to ensure that management at global companies can be what he calls "people who have a global mind-set" (Davis: 2007). Key to his company's training programs for global leaders is talent management. He says that there is a "war for talent" and in order to compete on the global stage, one must look at "growing your talent - and doing it quickly" (Davis: 2007). Knighton stresses that business leaders must become more "aggressive" in this area if they hope to be competitive (Davis: 2007). David Finegold, dean of the School of Management at Rutgers University, writing in the journal Leadership Excellence would seem to agree with Mr. Knighton. Finegold points out that today's market relies more and more on "knowledge-intensive, high value-added services" and cites GE and IBM as companies that have changed to meet this challenge (Finegold: 2007). He sees talent management as the key to survival in such a market. He states that "the people who generate distinctive new knowledge and build customer and supplier relationships [will] account for more of the net worth" (Finegold: 2007). Talent management, he says "is at the core" of attracting and keeping people who are capable of doing these things (Finegold: 2007).

How is talent management viewed by leaders in different industries? The views of people in business leadership positions seem to agree with these statements made by academics. This should provide evidence that concern about talent management is in fact practical and not just a theoretical exercise.

The petroleum industry seems a far cry from consultants and universities. It focuses on the extraction and transformation of petroleum, not theories. In this field, we find yet another discussion of talent management. In the petroleum industry, concern about talent management is driven by the projected "brain drain" that the industry will soon begin to feel as their most talented engineers and scientists as well as skilled workers in all areas of operations reach retirement age (New Tools for Talent Management. In the face of these issues, the industry is seeking the best and brightest from graduate programs around the world (New Tools for Talent Management.

From the medical field, two differing views on improving the talents of employees

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