The search for a sustainable competitive advantage is one of today's greatest business challenges. Questions concern fundamental issues of how work and learning occur in the workplace, including how work is organized, how leadership is practiced, how training is connected to performance and how a business culture is created. In its work with leading edge practice and research, ASTD has found that the most consistent competitive advantage for business, and for individual employees, is the ability to learn faster and perform more efficiently than the competition. ASTD is a worldwide leader in improving performance in the workplace and responds to issues which cut across business and industry, national and international governments and the needs of individuals for career development and lifelong learning. ASTD offers information, research and analysis and acts as a clearinghouse and network for a wide range of topics, including:

• Data on training expenditures

• Intellectual capital

• Link between training, learning, performance and productivity

• Evaluation and measurement of training and performance

• Youth apprenticeship and skill standards across nations

• What constitutes a "high performance workplace"

• Education and training policies of other nations

ASTD's research projects are workplace-based and are focused on several key themes: The ways in which individuals and organizations learn; the links between workplace learning and individual and organizational performance; the organizational interventions that best improve performance and enhance workplace learning; and the systems dimension of performance.

• Learn about how ASTD is intensifying member value, reaching across borders, engaging technology, harnessing the knowledge explosion, and guiding the profession through change.
   

• ASTD's publications cover all aspects of learning and performance in the workplace. Its books, magazines, periodicals and reports address the leading performance issues facing business and the profession and provide practical workplace tools for managers, professionals and technical workers.
   

• In an effort to help evaluate how training affects an organization's profits and earnings, ASTD created the Benchmarking Service.
   

• Using a data collection instrument called The ASTD Measurement Kit™, the Benchmarking Service provides standard measures that organizations can use to measure their training investments, practices and outcomes, and compare those with training of other organizations. The extensive database created from this effort has enabled ASTD to investigate the effect of training on financial performance.
   

• The results of this service are published in ASTD's annual State of the Industry Report.
   

• The ASTD Buyer's Guide and Consultants Directory is a directory of training suppliers in the field of workplace learning and performance. The online version is searchable.
   

• Do Your Own Research provides one stop shopping for information and more detailed and personalized searches upon request.

ASTD offers a variety of peer learning and networking opportunities.

• ASTD has more than 150 chapters across the United States, as well as worldwide interest groups on topics ranging from total quality management and performance technology to health care, information management and diversity in the workplace.
   

• At the company level, ASTD's Benchmarking Forum consists of 67 organizations dedicated to being worldwide leaders in workplace learning and performance. Established in 1991, the Benchmarking Forum is a consortium of private and public sector organizations from around the world, offering a way to benchmark training, learning, and performance improvement processes, practices, and outcomes, and providing access to a worldwide network of high level training professionals.
   

• ASTD conferences, expositions and seminars provide the most current information, along with "collaboration-in-action," for attendees from around the world. The annual ASTD International Conference and Exposition is the preeminent world forum for presentation and discussion of new issues and practices in learning and performance.
   

• The ASTD TechKnowledge conference and exposition, brings together the worlds of technical training and learning technologies into one venue.
   

• In addition, ASTD offers the Human Performance Improvement Certificate Program, providing the skills and hands-on experience training and performance professionals desire to address the changing needs in the workplace.