Leadership 4 Growth — Enterprise Ireland's CEO Scale-Up Programme

Leadership 4 Growth is a leadership-development programme for CEOs of high-potential, internationally trading Irish companies, run by the state agency Enterprise Ireland; it launched in 2006 with the Irish Software Association and Stanford Graduate School of Business, with a construction-sector edition added in 2008 and 2010 with Duke University in response to the domestic downturn.

The programme combines classroom modules on strategy and leadership, one-to-one executive coaching and a peer network of fellow CEOs, aiming to accelerate growth, exports and productivity among participating firms.

An ex-post evaluation for the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation covered the first five cohorts (2006–2010, 141 CEOs from 135 firms), building matched control groups from Enterprise Ireland's wider client portfolio and comparing five-year compound annual growth rates using Forfás administrative business data, supplemented by a CEO survey.

L4G software-sector cohorts grew turnover 8 to 25 percentage points faster than their matched control group, and every cohort increased sales-per-employee 3 to 30 percentage points more than controls; exports outperformed controls by 3–29 points for software cohorts and 79–160 points for the two construction cohorts, which pivoted overseas as the domestic market collapsed. Employment fell relative to the control group in three of the five cohorts, by 6, 20 and 5 percentage points, and 77% of surveyed CEOs said the programme had a positive impact on their business.

The evaluators present this as one of few leadership programmes assessed against a genuine matched control group using tax/administrative data, showing measurable export and productivity gains alongside an honest counterpoint that some gains coincided with relative headcount reductions.