Coverdale History

Coverdale has been pioneering the development of individual, team and organisational capability through the application of experiential (or inductive) learning since 1965. Our passion for constant innovation, insight and excellence continues to grow...

Ralph Coverdale, a British Industrial Psychologist, started Coverdale in 1965. He was a captain in the army and left in 1947 to read psychology at Oxford. His supervisor was Bernard Babington-Smith, a reader in experimental psychology.

Ralph developed his theories on how people think and work to get things done whilst at Oxford. He believed passionately that thinking and management were skills that could be developed; seriously challenging the view at that time of people having fixed skill sets, and locked IQs.

Ralph and Bernard worked together for many years after the formation of the Coverdale Organisation in order to develop Coverdale Learning, which was a highly developed form of learning through action - which has been subsequently described as Action or Inductive Learning.

Ralph was a man of great insight and passionate beliefs, and was strongly driven by the view that co-operation to mutual benefit was infinitely more productive than conflict and competition. Ralph Coverdale died in February 1975, aged only 56.

Coverdale - past and present achievements
are the basis for success in the future.

Discovery, Humanity, Achievement