Passion for Knowledge, High Standards and Competency
Few graduates of traditional universities or graduate schools emerge with a rudimentary knowledge of all of commercial diplomatic fields. More importantly they usually lack an ability to integrate the various fields into a coherent analysis and an integrated strategy. In most cases they also do not know how to apply their academic knowledge to real world situations.
In most institutions, a different department teaches each of commercial diplomacy related subjects. At Association of Certified Commercial Diplomats, the global professional body for commercial diplomats, the Qualified Certified Diplomat must be part commercial expert, part economist, part public policy analyst, part arbitrator, part anti-corruption practitioner, part politician, part lawyer, part negotiator, and public diplomat.
The Evolutionary Path
Our greatest believe at ACCD is that, it is the skills of commercial diplomats that enable governments, states and businesses to succeed. With global strategic partners and academic institutional members, we are changing the way the world delivers commercial diplomatic skills - changing the outputs of commercial diplomacy and training.
A steady evolutionary path has been set which will surely transform the legacy often inflexible "Commercial Diplomats' skills supply-chain" into a demand-led system which meets the needs of the global economy and can respond rapidly to emerging needs in the future. Moving to a demand-led system where demand comes from employers and individuals, is beginning to change the thinking and actions of the public, government and many private bodies, involved in the supply of commercial diplomatic skills globally.
The world will surely see improvements in commercial diplomacy, improvements in the way employers think about the use of commercial diplomatic skills and reductions in commercial diplomatic skills gaps and shortages, and also improvements in commercial diplomacy skills supply. Delivery on all this is obviously, a hugely challenging agenda for the global professional body.
