Podcasts Free Informal Life Long Learning

Podcasts are a great way to listen to and discover new music, but that's only a part of their story. Podcasts can also be a great source of information on any number of business and finance topics. Many enthusiastic members of the business community are now podcasting, as well as some extremely well respected institutions, such as the Harvard Business School and Stanford University.

Whatever role you have in business, keeping up to date with current thinking has long been recognised as vital to success. If you are in a regulated financial services sector or a member of a professional body, your regulator will likely have recognised your need to continually learn and implemented a system of CPD (Continuing Professional Development), CPE (Continuing Professional Education), or Life Long Learning. Generally CPD schemes require a mix of structured and informal learning. Structured CPD includes attendance at an evening class or undertaking an e-Learning course, such as the online finance courses offered by cpdwise.com. Informal CPD includes such diverse activities as reading magazines or watching DVDs.

By implementing a formal system for recording and reporting on CPD, regulators are simply defining a structure for activities that business people and finance professionals have always done on their own initiative. So with or without a formal system of CPD in place there is a consistent demand for business learning, both formal and informal.

To meet the demand for business learning and CPD for accountants there are numerous magazines, books and other media dedicated to every conceivable finance and business related topic. But now there's a new entrant in the field of informal business learning, the Podcast.

Podcasts are generally associated with music, but this new breed of podcast offers anyone with an interest in knowing more about business the opportunity to learn from some of the world's most respected business leaders.

Some of the best business podcasts on the web include Harvard Business Review Online's HBR Ideacast, which features "breakthrough ideas and commentary from leading thinkers in business and management", and the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders lecture series from Stanford University, a series of in-depth lectures presented by some of the most innovative business thinkers, recorded at Stanford.

Looking at matters from a UK perspective, smallbizpod.co.uk, "the UK's first small business podcast" features interviews and advice for small businesses, start-ups and entrepreneurs. Mind Your Own Business Podcast, at myobpod.com, discusses, analyzes and delivers powerful insights into such essential topics as marketing, branding, growth, success, motivating staff, work-life balance, and business finance.

Based in the US the venturevoice.com podcast takes a more personalized approach, covering how entrepreneurs build their businesses and live their lives.

These podcasts are amongst the best available on the web right now. Their promoters regularly and consistently produce new shows. Each has interviews with some of the most interesting doers, thinkers and commentators in the business world. Between them, they provide a very balanced diet of strategic and practical business knowledge.

The depth, variety, and standard of these freely available podcasts dedicated to business, finance and entrepreneurship offers anyone with an interest in business an ideal source of mind opening and intellectually stimulating life long learning.

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