Dr. Crane holds degrees in French literature (B.A., M.A., Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and translation (maitrise or M.A. from the University of Lyon, France). He also studied management (Young Managers' Programme or Executive MBA at Cranfield University in the U.K.).
Having worked in the field of management education for over twenty years, Dr. Robert Crane has built a solid reputation for competence in the areas of international development, cross cultural business applications, and institutional entrepreneurship in Eastern and Western Europe and North America. His career has spanned such management institutions as the J.L. Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University near Chicago, EM-Lyon in France, and the International Management Center (now the Business School of the Central European University) in Budapest. He has developed and/or run customized programs for executives for such firms as Baker & McKensie, McKinsey and Company, Societe Generale (now SoGen), and others.
Thanks to his wide travels and long term residence in both Europe and North America, Dr. Crane possesses a privileged viewpoint on cultural issues. This perspective has allowed him to create customized cross cultural business programs for multinational firms such as Royal Ten Cate (NL) and publish a series of books on cross cultural business with publishing houses in the U.K. and the U.S.
He has also created consortia both of universities offering joint degrees he helped design and of researchers working on collective publications. His long experience in advising companies has allowed him to facilitate idea sharing among firms as well as internal brainstorming for single companies. Finally, he has developed or enhanced the global dimension of institutions (IMC, IGS) and companies (Baker & McKensie, Royal Ten Cate).
As an entrepreneur, he has created the first global executive education program (1992), the first globally televised MBA program (National Technological University), and a pedagogical model for the first primary school to teach peace-making to small children through a knowledge of cultures and religions (The Peace School).